EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 63 of 120

Correct — D, (d) Tuluva Dynasty—Gunda. The ask is negative: the word 'not' is printed in bold italics and the question wants the single pair that is wrongly joined, so three of the four pairs are correct and only one has to be found. The Vijayanagara empire, founded on the Tungabhadra in 1336, was ruled by four successive families — Sangama from 1336, Saluva from 1485, Tuluva from 1505 and Aravidu from 1570 — and each transfer came about by a commander taking the throne from a weakened predecessor rather than by conquest from outside. The Tuluva line is the most famous of the four because it produced Krishna Deva Raya, and its kings are a short and well-known list: Vira Narasimha Raya, who took the crown in 1505; Krishna Deva Raya, who ruled from 1509 to 1529; Achyuta Deva Raya; Venkata the First; and Sadashiva Raya, the last of them, who reigned as a figurehead while his minister Aliya Rama Raya governed. The family's founding figure was Tuluva Narasa Nayaka, the commander who ruled as regent in the closing years of the Saluva house and whose sons Vira Narasimha and Krishna Deva Raya became kings. No ruler named Gunda appears anywhere in that succession, and the pair is therefore the one that fails. The other three hold: Harihara the Second was a Sangama king, the son of Bukka the First, ruling from 1377 to 1404; Timma, or Thimma Bhupala, was the second of the three Saluva rulers, reigning briefly in 1491 after his father Saluva Narasimha and killed soon afterwards; and Tirumala was the founder of the Aravidu house, the brother of Aliya Rama Raya, who rebuilt the state at Penukonda after the disaster at Talikota and formally took the throne in 1570. Because the Tuluva kings are the best-remembered of the four families, this is a negative item that rewards knowledge of what is famous rather than of what is obscure.

• (a)Sangama Dynasty—Harihara II — This pair is correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking which pair is wrong. The Sangama dynasty is the founding house of Vijayanagara, named after Sangama, the father of the brothers Harihara the First and Bukka the First who established the kingdom on the south bank of the Tungabhadra in 1336. Harihara the Second was Bukka the First's son and succeeded him in 1377, ruling until 1404; he assumed the imperial title Maharajadhiraja, extended the kingdom's reach on the western coast, and was followed by Deva Raya the First. The Sangama line held the throne for close to a century and a half, until Saluva Narasimha displaced the last of its kings in 1485. Note the pattern the question is built on: the numeral in a royal name is not decoration but a marker of a line, and Harihara the Second belongs to the same family as Harihara the First, which is the Sangama family.
• (b)Saluva Dynasty—Timma — This pair is also correct, and it is the option most likely to be picked by mistake, because Timma is the least familiar name in the set and unfamiliarity feels like error on a negative question. The Saluva dynasty is the shortest of the four Vijayanagara houses, holding the throne only from 1485 to 1505, and it had exactly three rulers: Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya, who took power from the last Sangama king; Timma, also written Thimma Bhupala, his son, whose reign in 1491 lasted only a few months before he was killed; and Narasimha Raya the Second, the younger son, under whom Tuluva Narasa Nayaka governed as regent until the Tuluva house took the crown outright. On a not-correctly-matched question, resist the impulse to pick the name you have never heard of. Test the pairs you do know first: if three of them stand, the fourth is the answer whether or not you recognise it.
• (c)Aravidu Dynasty—Tirumala — This pair is correct as well. The Aravidu dynasty is the fourth and last of the Vijayanagara houses, and it was founded by Tirumala Deva Raya, a brother of Aliya Rama Raya, the minister who had governed in the name of the last Tuluva king Sadashiva Raya and who was killed at the battle of Talikota, also called Rakshasa-Tangadi, in 1565 when a confederacy of the Deccan sultanates broke the Vijayanagara army. Tirumala withdrew the treasury and the court from the ruined capital to Penukonda, held the state together, and in 1570 set aside Sadashiva Raya and took the throne himself, founding the line that later moved to Chandragiri and Vellore and survived into the middle of the seventeenth century. A candidate who remembers only that the Aravidus came after Talikota has enough to confirm the pair, since Tirumala is the one Aravidu name attached to that moment.

Vijayanagara was ruled by four dynasties in succession, and the sequence is the single framework on which almost every question about the empire hangs. The Sangama house, founded by the brothers Harihara the First and Bukka the First in 1336, ruled until 1485 and produced Deva Raya the First and Deva Raya the Second, under whom the state built its cavalry and its irrigation works and traded for horses with the Arabs. The Saluva house, 1485 to 1505, was the shortest, beginning when the commander Saluva Narasimha took power from the last Sangama ruler in what historians call the first usurpation, and ending with the regency of Tuluva Narasa Nayaka. The Tuluva house, 1505 to 1570, opened with Vira Narasimha and reached its height under Krishna Deva Raya, who ruled from 1509 to 1529, wrote the Telugu poem Amuktamalyada, patronised the eight poets known as the ashtadiggajas, and was described by the Portuguese visitors Domingo Paes and Duarte Barbosa. The Aravidu house, from 1570, was founded by Tirumala after the defeat at Talikota in 1565 had destroyed the capital, and it ruled a shrinking territory from Penukonda and then Chandragiri. Two of these transitions were engineered by ministers or commanders who first governed in a king's name and then replaced him, which is why so many Vijayanagara names sit ambiguously between the houses and why questions of this kind are worth setting.

A pair-matching question phrased as which pair is not correctly matched is a different exercise from a Match List item, and this paper contains both. Here every option is a self-contained claim, so the four can be checked in any order and the work stops as soon as three have been confirmed. The efficient order is the order of familiarity: confirm the pairs you are sure of, and let the remaining one be the answer. That discipline matters most when the unfamiliar name is on a pair that is actually correct, as it is here with Timma, and the famous line is the one carrying the invented king. The paper's own signalling is worth knowing too. This booklet prints the negation in bold italics on the questions where the ask itself is negative, and there are seventeen such questions in the paper, so a candidate who has learned to look for that emphasis will not misread the ask. Do not generalise the habit, though: the same paper carries at least two questions where a negation sits inside a numbered statement in ordinary weight, under a positively worded ask, and there the bold gives no warning at all. Read the ask, then read the statements, and treat the typography as a helpful confirmation rather than as the thing you rely on.

• Vijayanagara was ruled by four dynasties in succession — Sangama from 1336, Saluva from 1485, Tuluva from 1505 and Aravidu from 1570 — and the empire was founded by the brothers Harihara the First and Bukka the First on the Tungabhadra.
• The Tuluva kings were Vira Narasimha Raya from 1505, Krishna Deva Raya from 1509 to 1529, Achyuta Deva Raya, Venkata the First and Sadashiva Raya; the family's founding figure was the regent Tuluva Narasa Nayaka, and no ruler named Gunda belongs to the line.
• The Saluva dynasty had three rulers in twenty years — Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya from 1485, Timma or Thimma Bhupala briefly in 1491, and Narasimha Raya the Second until 1505, during whose reign Tuluva Narasa Nayaka governed as regent.
• Harihara the Second, a Sangama king and the son of Bukka the First, ruled from 1377 to 1404, took the title Maharajadhiraja and was succeeded by Deva Raya the First.
• The Aravidu dynasty was founded by Tirumala Deva Raya, brother of Aliya Rama Raya who fell at the battle of Talikota in 1565; Tirumala moved the court to Penukonda and took the throne in 1570, and the line later ruled from Chandragiri and Vellore.
• Krishna Deva Raya, the greatest of the Tuluva kings, composed the Amuktamalyada in Telugu, patronised the ashtadiggajas led by Allasani Peddana, and was described by the Portuguese travellers Domingo Paes and Duarte Barbosa.

• Picking the unfamiliar name on a not-correctly-matched question; Timma really was a Saluva ruler, and the wrong pair here carries the most famous dynasty in the set
• Missing that the ask is negative and choosing a correctly matched pair; this booklet prints the word in bold italics on such questions, but the bold cannot be relied on when a negation sits inside a numbered statement instead of in the ask
• Confusing Tuluva Narasa Nayaka, the regent who founded the family's fortunes, with the crowned Tuluva kings, or treating him as a Saluva ruler because he governed in a Saluva king's name
• Mixing up the two Narasimhas — Saluva Narasimha Deva Raya, who began the Saluva line in 1485, and Vira Narasimha Raya, who began the Tuluva line in 1505
• Assuming the empire ended with the defeat of 1565; the Aravidu dynasty continued to rule a reduced state from Penukonda and later Chandragiri and Vellore for several decades afterwards

Vijayanagara comes up in this paper's medieval block as attribution rather than as narrative: which king belongs to which of the four houses, who founded which line, which capital followed which defeat, and which traveller or poet belongs to which reign. Pair-matching in the not-correctly-matched form is the favoured vehicle, because it lets the setter place three verifiable pairs against one fabricated one and test whether the candidate checks all four. The fabricated element is usually a plausible-sounding name attached to a famous dynasty rather than an obviously wrong king attached to an obscure one, since the first is harder to catch. Prepare by fixing the four dynasties with their opening dates and their two or three principal rulers each; that framework alone answers most items, and it converts a recall question into an elimination exercise.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Aravidu dynasty of Vijayanagara was founded after the battle of Talikota by which one of the following?

  • (a)Aliya Rama Raya
  • (b)Sadashiva Raya
  • (c)Tirumala Deva Raya
  • (d)Venkatapati Raya

  Answer(c) Tirumala Deva Raya — brother of Aliya Rama Raya, who was killed at Talikota in 1565, Tirumala withdrew the court and treasury to Penukonda, governed in the name of the last Tuluva king Sadashiva Raya, and in 1570 took the throne himself to found the Aravidu line. Aliya Rama Raya was the minister who provoked the confederacy of the sultanates and died in the battle, Sadashiva Raya was the figurehead Tuluva king he governed for, and Venkatapati Raya was a later Aravidu ruler.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following gives the correct sequence of the ruling dynasties of the Vijayanagara Empire from the earliest to the latest?

  • (a)Sangama, Tuluva, Saluva, Aravidu
  • (b)Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva, Aravidu
  • (c)Saluva, Sangama, Aravidu, Tuluva
  • (d)Sangama, Saluva, Aravidu, Tuluva

  Answer(b) Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva, Aravidu — the Sangama house founded the empire in 1336 and ruled until 1485, the Saluva house held the throne from 1485 to 1505, the Tuluva house from 1505 to 1570 and produced Krishna Deva Raya, and the Aravidu house was founded by Tirumala in 1570 after the defeat at Talikota in 1565. Fixing this order also fixes most of the empire's chronology, since each dynasty is remembered by one or two rulers.