CDS (I) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 4 of 120

Correct — A, Raja Man Singh of Gwalior. Man Kautuhal is the music treatise compiled under the patronage of Raja Man Singh Tomar, who ruled Gwalior from 1486 to 1516. He is the ruler whose court turned dhrupad into a court art, he is credited with composing and singing dhrupad himself, and the work is named after him. The other three names are all musical, which is what makes the item look harder than it is, but none of them is a patron who could have presided over this compilation. Fix the dates and the roles and the answer falls out.

• (b)Tansen — A performer, not a patron, and of a later generation — Tansen lived roughly 1500 to 1589, sang at the Rewa court and then for Akbar, who gave him the title 'Mian'. Man Singh Tomar had died in 1516.
• (c)Meera Bai — A sixteenth-century bhakti poet-saint of Rajasthan whose padas are devotional songs. She composed and sang, but she held no court and produced no treatise on music.
• (d)Amir Khusrau — A poet and musician of the Delhi Sultanate who died in 1325, roughly 160 years before Man Singh Tomar came to the throne. Later tradition credits him with several musical innovations, but not with this work.

Dhrupad is the older of the two great vocal forms of Hindustani music, sung in a slow, austere style with a long unmetered alap before the composition. Its passage from temple to court happened at Gwalior under Raja Man Singh Tomar in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and Man Kautuhal is the treatise attached to that moment.

Three of the four options are musicians and one is a patron, so the quickest route is to read the stem's phrase 'prepared under the aegis of' as asking who commissioned the work, not who sang. That eliminates Meera Bai and Amir Khusrau at once. Between Man Singh and Tansen the dates decide it: Tansen was born around 1500 and Man Singh died in 1516, so Tansen was a boy when the Gwalior court's dhrupad programme was already established. Popular accounts sometimes place Tansen at Man Singh's court; the chronology does not allow it, and this question quietly rewards anyone who has noticed that. The naming convention is the other clue — a work called Man Kautuhal takes its name from its patron. As of the present day dhrupad is still performed, and 'Gwalior' survives as the name of the oldest of the khayal gharanas, so the court's musical line did not end with the treatise.

• Raja Man Singh Tomar ruled Gwalior from 1486 to 1516; he was born in 1443, a son of Raja Kalyanmall.
• He is credited with composing and singing dhrupad and with having it compiled in the work Man Kautuhal, and he was the leading patron of the genre.
• Tansen lived roughly 1500 to 1589, served the Rewa court and then Akbar, and was honoured by Akbar with the title 'Mian'.
• Amir Khusrau died in 1325, in the Delhi Sultanate period, well before the Tomar court at Gwalior.
• The Gwalior gharana is the oldest of the khayal gharanas of Hindustani classical music.

• Picking the most famous musician on the list instead of the patron the stem actually asks for.
• Believing the popular story that Tansen sang at Man Singh Tomar's court — Man Singh died in 1516 and Tansen was born around 1500.
• Attributing every medieval musical innovation to Amir Khusrau; many of those attributions are late and disputed.

Asked as a one-line 'prepared under the aegis of' item, where the work's name is itself the clue to its patron.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior is chiefly associated with the patronage of which one of the following musical genres?

  • (a)Khayal
  • (b)Dhrupad
  • (c)Thumri
  • (d)Tappa

  Answer(b) Dhrupad — the Gwalior court under Man Singh Tomar is where dhrupad took its shape as a court form.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Amir Khusrau, the poet and musician, was associated with the courts of which one of the following?

  • (a)The Delhi Sultanate
  • (b)The Vijayanagara empire
  • (c)The Mughal empire
  • (d)The Ahom kingdom

  Answer(a) The Delhi Sultanate — Khusrau served a succession of sultans at Delhi and died in 1325, long before the Mughals.