MPPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 61 of 100

Correct — D, Jagnik. Jagnik (Jagnayak) was the bard-poet of the Chandela king Paramardi Deva ('Parmal') of Mahoba in the late 12th century, and tradition credits him with composing the Alha-Khand — also called Parmal Raso or Alha Raso. It is a cycle of heroic ballads about Alha and Udal, the Banaphar brothers who commanded Paramardi's army against Prithviraj Chauhan of Ajmer. The text Jagnik composed is itself lost; what survives is the sung oral tradition, carried by professional Alha singers across Bundelkhand, Baghelkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and the printed recensions collected in the 19th century.

• (a)Chand Bardai — Chand Bardai is the court poet of the OTHER side of the same war — he is credited with the Prithviraj Raso, the epic on Prithviraj Chauhan. Because both works belong to the same era and the same conflict, he is the most tempting wrong answer here.
• (b)Rajasekhara — Rajasekhara was a Sanskrit poet-dramatist of about the 9th–10th century (Kavyamimamsa, Karpuramanjari, Balaramayana), associated with the Gurjara-Pratihara court. Wrong century, wrong language and wrong genre for a Bundeli martial ballad.
• (c)Parmardidev — Paramardi Deva is the Chandela king of Mahoba — the patron and the subject of the ballad, not its author. This is the classic patron-versus-poet trap: the ruler whose court the work celebrates is placed in the options next to the poet who actually wrote it.

Alha-Khand belongs to the vir-gatha (heroic-ballad) stream of early Hindi literature — the Adikaal, when court bards composed 'Raso' works glorifying their patron king's wars. The reader has to keep three roles apart: the hero (Alha and Udal, the Banaphar commanders), the patron (Paramardi Deva, the Chandela ruler of Mahoba), and the poet (Jagnik, the court bard). Unlike a written classic, Alha survives mainly as performance — sung in the monsoon by Alha singers, which is why its text exists in many regional versions rather than one fixed original.

Reason by pairing rather than by recall. Chand Bardai is welded to Prithviraj Raso, so he is out. Rajasekhara is a Sanskrit-era name that does not belong in a 12th-century Hindi ballad question at all. That leaves the king and the bard — and a question that asks 'who is the AUTHOR' can never be answered with the name of the ruler being praised. Jagnik is what is left, and it is right.

• Alha-Khand (also called Parmal Raso / Alha Raso) is a cycle of heroic ballads on Alha and Udal, the Banaphar commanders of the Chandela king Paramardi Deva of Mahoba.
• Authorship is attributed to Jagnik, Paramardi's court bard; the original composition is lost and the work survives as a living sung tradition.
• The war it narrates is Prithviraj Chauhan's campaign against Mahoba, around 1182 — the same conflict that Chand Bardai's Prithviraj Raso tells from the Chauhan side.
• Alha is still performed during the monsoon across Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand, which is why it appears in Madhya Pradesh's art-and-culture syllabus as well as in history.

• Choosing the patron king instead of the poet — the commission deliberately puts Parmardidev in the options.
• Assuming Chand Bardai wrote every 'Raso' work; each Raso has its own bard.
• Treating Rajasekhara, a Sanskrit author of several centuries earlier, as a Hindi-era poet.

Both MPPSC and UPSC ask this as work-to-author or poet-to-patron matching, so store each ballad as a triplet: work + poet + the king whose court it belongs to.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The ballad Alha-Khand celebrates Alha and Udal, commanders of which kingdom?

  • (a)The Chandelas of Mahoba
  • (b)The Chauhans of Ajmer
  • (c)The Paramaras of Dhar
  • (d)The Kalachuris of Tripuri

  Answer(a) The Chandelas of Mahoba — Alha and Udal served the Chandela king Paramardi Deva.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Prithviraj Raso, the epic on Prithviraj Chauhan, is traditionally attributed to:

  • (a)Chand Bardai
  • (b)Jagnik
  • (c)Keshavdas
  • (d)Bhushan

  Answer(a) Chand Bardai — his court bard, the counterpart of Jagnik on the Chandela side.