CDS (II) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 70 of 120

Correct — C, 1, 2 and 3. The three words belong to one set of royal titles used in late medieval peninsular India, and each is matched to the right power here. Gajapati, from gaja meaning elephant, means lord of elephants and is the dynasty that ruled Odisha from the middle of the fifteenth century — Kapilendra, Purushottama and Prataparudra, whose kingdom at its height reached from the Ganga down towards the Kaveri. Ashvapati, lord of horses, was applied to the sultans of the Deccan, the Bahmani rulers and their successor states, whose fighting strength lay in imported Arabian and Persian cavalry. Narapati, lord of men, was the style of the rayas of Vijayanagara, whose armies rested on massed infantry. The three titles were used together as a way of describing the balance of power in the peninsula, each kingdom named after the arm of war it was strongest in, so once you have the arm you have the kingdom.

• (a)1 only — Concedes the easiest pairing and rejects the other two, but ashvapati for the Deccan sultans and narapati for the Vijayanagara rayas are the standard usages, quoted together with gajapati in the sources.
• (b)2 only — Rejects the pairing that gives the Odisha dynasty its very name. The kingdom is called Gajapati precisely because its rulers took that title.
• (d)None of the above — Would require all three of a well-attested trio to be misassigned. Nothing in the pairings has been swapped.

Fifteenth and sixteenth-century peninsular India was held between three powers, and contemporary usage labelled each by the arm of war it relied on. The Gajapatis of Odisha, whose dynasty is named from the title itself, fielded war elephants. The Deccan sultanates, beginning with the Bahmanis and continuing through Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, Bidar and Berar, spent heavily on cavalry bought through the Arabian Sea ports. Vijayanagara, founded in 1336 and ruled at its height by Krishnadeva Raya, drew on the manpower of the southern uplands. The three fought one another over the Raichur doab and the Krishna–Godavari coast for most of the period.

This is a vocabulary item disguised as history, and the vocabulary does the work. Gaja is elephant, ashva is horse, nara is man; pati is lord. Match each animal to the army that was famous for it and the pairs assemble themselves. The trap is a vague sense that Vijayanagara, being a large empire, must have been the elephant power, or that the Odisha kingdom is too obscure to have a title of its own. In fact the dynasty's name in every textbook is Gajapati. One point of nuance: a fourth title, chhatrapati, belongs to a different context — it is the style Shivaji took in 1674 — so do not fold it into this trio.

• Gajapati, from gaja meaning elephant, is the title of the dynasty that ruled Odisha from the mid-fifteenth century.
• Ashvapati, lord of horses, was applied to the Bahmani and later Deccan sultans, whose strength lay in imported cavalry.
• Narapati, lord of men, was the style of the rayas of Vijayanagara.
• Kapilendra founded the Gajapati line in 1434 and Prataparudra was its last major ruler; the kingdom lost ground to Vijayanagara and the Deccan sultans in the sixteenth century.
• Chhatrapati is a separate title in this family of terms and belongs to Shivaji, crowned in 1674 — it is not part of the peninsular trio.

• Assigning the elephant title to Vijayanagara because it was the largest of the three states.
• Reading the three titles as ranks in one hierarchy rather than as separate styles of three rival powers.
• Bringing chhatrapati into the set; that title belongs to Shivaji in the seventeenth century.

As a pairs item matching royal titles to dynasties, or as a single-answer question on which power a given title belonged to.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The title Gajapati was borne by the rulers of which region?

  • (a)Odisha
  • (b)Malwa
  • (c)Gujarat
  • (d)Bengal

  Answer(a) Odisha — the Gajapati dynasty founded by Kapilendra in 1434 takes its name from the title, which means lord of elephants.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which title, meaning lord of men, was used for the rulers of Vijayanagara?

  • (a)Ashvapati
  • (b)Narapati
  • (c)Gajapati
  • (d)Chhatrapati

  Answer(b) Narapati — nara means man; ashvapati belonged to the Deccan sultans and gajapati to the kings of Odisha.