CDS (I) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 2 of 120

Correct — D, 1, 2 and 3. Every statement holds. The Maduraikkanchi is the sixth and longest poem of the Pattuppattu, 782 lines by Mangudi Marudanar, court poet of the Pandya king Nedunjeliyan, and it is a set-piece description of Madurai laid out hour by hour from morning to dawn — a capital of fortified gates, broad streets, mansions and big markets. The particular picture statement 1 quotes, walls closing three sides with the Vaigai closing the fourth, is the standard reading of that description, and the Vaigai does run north-west to south-east through the city. Statement 2 is checkable word for word: Kautilya's Arthashastra, in the chapter on goods entering the treasury, says 'Of cotton fabrics, those of Madhura, of Aparanta, western parts, of Kalinga, of Kasi, of Vanga, of Vatsa, and of Mahisha are the best' — Madhura here is Madurai, and the sentence is exactly a statement about fine cotton. Statement 3 follows from the same corpus and from the Greek and Roman notices of the Tamil country, which place Madurai among the inland manufacturing and market towns feeding the peninsular trade.

• (a)1 only — Concedes the Sangam description but rejects the Arthashastra reference, which is the one statement here that can be quoted verbatim from the text.
• (b)1 and 2 only — Rejects statement 3, yet Madurai's standing as a craft and market centre is stated repeatedly in the same Sangam corpus and echoed in classical Western notices of the Tamil country.
• (c)2 and 3 only — Drops statement 1, but the Maduraikkanchi is literally a poem about Madurai, and its description of the walled city on the river is the best-known Sangam picture of the Pandya capital.

Madurai was the Pandya capital of the Sangam age and is one of the very few early Indian cities described at length in a surviving contemporary poem. Three independent kinds of evidence converge on it — Tamil Sangam poetry, north Indian Sanskrit prose in the Arthashastra, and Greek and Roman accounts of the peninsular trade — which is why examiners like building a statements item on it.

The reasoning route is to check each statement against a different source. The Maduraikkanchi settles statement 1 because describing Madurai is what the poem is for. Statement 2 looks improbable to a student who assumes a north Indian treatise would not name a far southern town, but the Arthashastra's list of the best cotton fabrics opens with Madhura, and the same text elsewhere names southern pearls and conches — early India's textual worlds were not sealed off from one another. Statement 3 is the soft one, phrased as 'other literary sources', so it survives on the same evidence. The item rewards noticing that no statement here contains a testable falsehood; the reflex to keep one statement out of three is what costs marks.

• Maduraikkanchi is the sixth and longest poem of the Pattuppattu — 782 lines composed by Mangudi Marudanar, court poet of the Pandya king Nedunjeliyan — describing Madurai across morning, evening, dusk, night and dawn.
• Kautilya's Arthashastra states: 'Of cotton fabrics, those of Madhura, of Aparanta, western parts, of Kalinga, of Kasi, of Vanga, of Vatsa, and of Mahisha are the best.'
• Madurai stands on the Vaigai, which runs north-west to south-east through the city.
• Korkai, on the Tamraparni, was the Pandya port famed for pearls in Sangam poems and in Greek accounts; Madurai was the inland capital, not the port.
• The second book of the later Tamil epic Silappadikaram is set in Madurai.

• Assuming a north Indian Sanskrit treatise like the Arthashastra would not name a southern town — it names Madhura first in its cotton list.
• Confusing Madurai, the inland Pandya capital, with Korkai, the Pandya port celebrated for pearls.
• Treating Maduraikkanchi as a late or devotional text; it belongs to the Pattuppattu of the Sangam corpus.

Asked as a statements item that mixes a Sangam poem, a Sanskrit treatise and 'other literary sources' about one early city, so that each statement has to be checked against a different kind of evidence.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Maduraikkanchi, the long poem describing the Pandya capital, belongs to which one of the following Sangam collections?

  • (a)Ettuthogai
  • (b)Pattuppattu
  • (c)Padinenkilkanakku
  • (d)Tolkappiyam

  Answer(b) Pattuppattu — Maduraikkanchi is the sixth and longest of the Ten Idylls that make up the Pattuppattu.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following rivers flows through Madurai?

  • (a)Kaveri
  • (b)Tamraparni
  • (c)Vaigai
  • (d)Periyar

  Answer(c) Vaigai — the Vaigai runs north-west to south-east through Madurai; the Tamraparni is the river of the Pandya port of Korkai.