Consider the following pairs of texts and their subjects : 1. Tilakmanjari : Mathematics 2. Nighantu : Medicine 3. Janakiharan : Logic Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched ?

Correct — B, 2 only. A nighantu is a glossary, and in the Ayurvedic tradition the word names the standard form of materia medica — the Dhanvantari Nighantu, the Madanapala Nighantu, the Raja Nighantu and the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu are all lexicons of medicinal plants and substances, listing synonyms, properties and uses. The pairing with medicine is the one the examiner intends and the only one on the list that survives. Tilakamanjari is a Sanskrit prose romance by the Jain poet Dhanapala, written at the Paramara court of Malwa around the turn of the eleventh century, and has nothing to do with mathematics. Janakiharana, 'the abduction of Janaki', is a mahakavya on the Rama story attributed to Kumaradasa, and is poetry rather than logic.

• (a)1 only — Tilakamanjari is a work of Sanskrit prose fiction in the tradition of Bana's Kadambari. Mathematical writing of that age runs under different titles altogether, such as the Ganitasarasangraha.
• (c)1 and 2 — Pair 2 stands but pair 1 does not, since Tilakamanjari is a romance and not a mathematical treatise.
• (d)2 and 3 — Pair 2 stands but pair 3 does not. Janakiharana narrates the Ramayana story in courtly Sanskrit verse; the literature of logic is the nyaya corpus.

Sanskrit literature is organised by genre, and the title of a work often signals the genre. A katha or akhyayika is prose narrative; a mahakavya is a long court poem; a nighantu is a glossary or lexicon; a sangraha or sara-sangraha is a compendium of a science; and the nyaya works handle logic and epistemology. Matching a title to its subject is easier once the genre label is read off the name.

Match-the-pair items reward elimination. Tilakamanjari and Janakiharana are both belles-lettres, so 'mathematics' and 'logic' are visibly the wrong shelf for them, and once those two pairs fall only option (b) is left. One honest complication is worth knowing: the earliest text called Nighantu is the Vedic word list explained in Yaska's Nirukta, so the term begins as lexicography in general and becomes the standard label for medical lexicons later. The paper is using the medical sense.

• Tilakamanjari is a Sanskrit prose romance by Dhanapala, a Jain poet of the Paramara court in Malwa.
• Janakiharana is a Sanskrit mahakavya on the Rama story, attributed to Kumaradasa.
• In Ayurveda a nighantu is a lexicon of medicinal substances; the Dhanvantari, Madanapala and Raja Nighantus are the best known.
• The earliest Nighantu is the Vedic glossary on which Yaska's Nirukta is a commentary.
• Sanskrit mathematics of the medieval centuries runs under titles such as Ganitasarasangraha, Lilavati and Siddhanta Shiromani.

• Guessing a subject from the sound of a title rather than from its known author.
• Confusing Janakiharana with a work on nyaya because both are associated with learned Sanskrit.
• Overlooking that a nighantu can mean any glossary, of which the medical ones are the most numerous.

A match-the-pairs item where two pairs are clearly mismatched, so elimination alone reaches the answer.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Tilakamanjari, a Sanskrit prose romance, was composed by

  • (a)Dhanapala
  • (b)Bhavabhuti
  • (c)Bilhana
  • (d)Kshemendra

  Answer(a) Dhanapala — a Jain poet associated with the Paramara court of Malwa.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Ayurvedic tradition, a nighantu is

  • (a)a surgical manual
  • (b)a lexicon of medicinal substances
  • (c)a treatise on pulse diagnosis
  • (d)a collection of hymns for healing

  Answer(b) a lexicon of medicinal substances — listing synonyms, properties and uses of drugs.