Where is the Vikramkhol Cave located?
- (a)Odisha
- (b)Bihar
- (c)Telangana
- (d)West Bengal
Correct — A, Odisha. The Vikramkhol cave, also written Bikramkhol, is a rock shelter in western Odisha. It lies in the Belpahar range of reserved forest in Jharsuguda district, about twelve kilometres from the town of Belpahar, in the sandstone country near the Ib river valley. What made it famous is a long line of engraved marks on the rock face, brought to notice in the 1930s and first studied by the historian K. P. Jayaswal, who read them as a picto-syllabic script standing somewhere between the Harappan signs and Brahmi and provisionally dated them to around 1500 BCE. That reading has never been accepted generally — some epigraphists, Richard Salomon among them, regard the marks as natural or pseudo-inscriptions rather than writing at all — so what the exam can safely ask, and does ask, is where the site is rather than what it says.
- (b)Bihar — Bihar has its own celebrated rock-cut caves, the Barabar group in Jehanabad district, granted to the Ajivika sect in Ashoka's reign and the oldest rock-cut caves in India. Those are excavated chambers of the Mauryan period; Vikramkhol is a natural sandstone shelter several hundred kilometres to the south-east.
- (c)Telangana — Vikramkhol is not in the Telangana Deccan. The site sits in the Ib river country of western Odisha, in the same broad belt of sandstone shelters that runs through the state's Jharsuguda and Sundargarh districts.
- (d)West Bengal — West Bengal borders Odisha on the north-east, which is the only thing that makes it plausible here. The cave lies at the far western end of Odisha, a long way from the Bengal border.
Odisha carries one of the denser concentrations of early rock art and early inscriptions in eastern India. Besides Vikramkhol there are the painted shelters at Gudahandi in Kalahandi district, while the Udayagiri and Khandagiri hills near Bhubaneswar hold the Hathigumpha inscription of the Kalinga king Kharavela, one of the most important epigraphic records of the first century BCE. Sites of this kind fall into two very different classes — painted or engraved shelters of prehistoric date, and cut-and-dressed caves with datable inscriptions — and Vikramkhol belongs to the first, which is why its date is argued over.
This is a place-name item with nothing to reason from, so the honest advice is to learn the site with its state and district attached and to keep the surrounding uncertainty separate from the location. The location is well documented: Belpahar range, Jharsuguda district, Odisha. The claims made about the engraving — that it is writing, that it is transitional between Harappan and Brahmi, that it dates to about 1500 BCE — belong to one scholar's reading of the 1930s and are not settled, so do not carry them into an answer as though they were established. Note also that the name appears in print both as Vikramkhol and as Bikramkhol, which is worth recognising when the same site turns up under the other spelling.
- Vikramkhol, also spelt Bikramkhol, is a rock shelter in the Belpahar reserved forest of Jharsuguda district, Odisha, about 12 km from Belpahar town.
- Its engraved marks were noticed around the 1930s and first studied by K. P. Jayaswal.
- Jayaswal read them as picto-syllabic writing intermediate between the Harappan signs and Brahmi and dated them provisionally to about 1500 BCE.
- That reading is contested; several epigraphists treat the marks as pseudo-inscriptions rather than a script, so the date and decipherment remain unsettled.
- Odisha's other well-known early sites include the painted shelters at Gudahandi in Kalahandi district and the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela at Udayagiri near Bhubaneswar.
The location is documented; the reading of the engraving is a ninety-year-old argument that has never closed.
- Repeating the 1500 BCE date or the Harappan-to-Brahmi reading as settled fact; both are one scholar's disputed proposal.
- Confusing a natural rock shelter with an excavated rock-cut cave — the two have completely different dating methods.
- Missing the site under its alternative spelling, Bikramkhol.
As a site-to-state match, or inside a statements item on prehistoric writing and rock art in India.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Hathigumpha inscription, which records the achievements of the Kalinga king Kharavela, is located in which one of the following states?
- (a)Bihar
- (b)Odisha
- (c)Andhra Pradesh
- (d)Madhya Pradesh
Answer(b) Odisha — it is carved in the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar, in the same state as the Vikramkhol shelter though from a much later and far better documented period.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Barabar caves, the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in India, were granted by Ashoka to which one of the following sects?
- (a)Ajivikas
- (b)Digambara Jains
- (c)Theravada Buddhists
- (d)Pashupatas
Answer(a) Ajivikas — the sect founded by Makkhali Gosala. The caves lie in Jehanabad district of Bihar and carry Mauryan-period dedicatory inscriptions.