MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 6 of 100

Correct — option (4): (a)-(i), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iii), (d)-(iv), the straight-down mapping. Varahamihira, the sixth-century astronomer associated with Ujjain, wrote the Panchasiddhantika, which is precisely what its name says — a digest of the five astronomical siddhantas current before him — and he is equally well known for the Brihat Samhita and the Brihat Jataka. Vagbhata belongs to the medical tradition and wrote the Ashtanga Sangraha, so called because it organises medicine into eight limbs; he is the third name in the Brihat-trayi, the great triad of Ayurvedic authorities, beside Charaka and Sushruta. Ishvarakrishna wrote the Samkhya Karika, the earliest surviving systematic text of the Samkhya school and the work through which the dualism of purusha and prakriti is normally taught. The fourth pair carries a nuance the card will not paper over: the Vaisheshika Sutra itself is ascribed to Kanada, and Prashastapada — the name the booklet prints as 'Prasatapada' — is its classic expositor, author of the Padarthadharmasangraha, the commentary through which the school's doctrine of categories and atoms was transmitted. The pairing therefore works in the sense in which the syllabus uses it, associating the Vaisheshika text with the man who systematised it, and the Commission's final key reflects that reading. In the hall, none of this needs to be resolved, because the first pair alone decides the question. Varahamihira and the Panchasiddhantika are inseparable, and only one of the four printed options contains (a)-(i). Fix that pair and option (4) is the only survivor — the other three send the Panchasiddhantika to Vagbhata, to Ishvarakrishna and to Prashastapada respectively, and every one of those is a category error, moving an astronomical digest into medicine or into philosophy.

• (1)(a) - (ii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — A clean two-by-two swap that gets nothing right. It gives Varahamihira the medical Ashtanga Sangraha and Vagbhata the astronomical Panchasiddhantika, then exchanges the two philosophical texts as well, sending the Vaisheshika Sutra to Ishvarakrishna and the Samkhya Karika to Prashastapada. The first exchange is the one to notice, because it crosses disciplines: Varahamihira is an astronomer and Vagbhata a physician, and no amount of uncertainty about the philosophical pairs should let a candidate accept a swap between an astronomical digest and a treatise on the eight limbs of medicine.
• (2)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (i) — The complete reversal of the correct mapping — the first name is sent to the last text, the second to the third, and so on back up the column. So Varahamihira gets the Vaisheshika Sutra, Vagbhata the Samkhya Karika, Ishvarakrishna the Ashtanga Sangraha and Prashastapada the Panchasiddhantika. Every pair crosses a discipline boundary, which makes this the easiest option to discard: the four names belong to three different fields — astronomy, medicine and philosophy — and a candidate who knows only which field each name belongs to can eliminate this option without knowing a single title.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — Another full displacement: Varahamihira to the Samkhya Karika, Vagbhata to the Vaisheshika Sutra, Ishvarakrishna to the Panchasiddhantika and Prashastapada to the Ashtanga Sangraha. It is the option that most thoroughly ignores what kind of work each title is. The pair that exposes it fastest is the third — putting the Panchasiddhantika, a summary of five astronomical systems, into the hands of the founding author of Samkhya philosophy. Sorting the four titles by field before reading the options, rather than after, is what makes this class of distractor collapse on sight.

Ancient Indian intellectual writing is examined as three separate streams that share a matching column, and telling them apart is usually enough to answer. Astronomy and mathematics run from Aryabhata, whose Aryabhatiya set out the sine table and a heliocentrically suggestive account of the earth's rotation, through Varahamihira's Panchasiddhantika, Brihat Samhita and Brihat Jataka, to Brahmagupta's Brahmasphuta Siddhanta and later Bhaskara II's Siddhanta Shiromani. Medicine runs through the Brihat-trayi — Charaka Samhita on internal medicine, Sushruta Samhita on surgery, and Vagbhata's Ashtanga Sangraha and Ashtanga Hridaya, which organise the discipline into eight limbs. Philosophy runs through the six orthodox darshanas, each with a root text and a principal expositor: Samkhya with Ishvarakrishna's Samkhya Karika, Yoga with Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, Nyaya with Gautama, Vaisheshika with Kanada's sutras and Prashastapada's commentary, Mimamsa with Jaimini, and Vedanta with Badarayana's Brahma Sutra. Held this way, the whole column reduces to three buckets, and most matching items are decided by the bucket rather than by the title.

The technique this question rewards is sorting before matching. Before reading any of the four permutations, label the (i)-(iv) column by field: the Panchasiddhantika is astronomy, the Ashtanga Sangraha is medicine, the Samkhya Karika and the Vaisheshika Sutra are philosophy. Then label the (a)-(d) column the same way. Three of the four options here cross a field boundary in their very first pair, so they can be dismissed without any recall of titles at all. That is a general property of matching items built from mixed disciplines, and it is worth exploiting on a paper carrying seventeen of them. It is also worth noticing the honest complication in the last pair, because a well-prepared candidate will see it and hesitate: the Vaisheshika Sutra is Kanada's, and Prashastapada is its commentator. The pairing stands in the sense the syllabus uses — the name most closely associated with the systematic exposition of that text — and it is not the pair that decides the item in any case. Where a source is contested, the disciplined move is to answer on the pairs that are not, which here means answering on Varahamihira alone. Finally, note the booklet's spelling: 'Prasatapada' in English and प्रसतपद in Marathi are both garbled forms of Prashastapada, so identify the name by shape.

• Varahamihira, of the sixth century CE and associated with Ujjain, wrote the Panchasiddhantika, a digest of the five astronomical siddhantas current before his time, and also the Brihat Samhita and the Brihat Jataka.
• Vagbhata's Ashtanga Sangraha organises medicine into eight limbs, and with the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita it forms the Brihat-trayi, the great triad of Ayurvedic authority; Vagbhata also wrote the Ashtanga Hridaya.
• Ishvarakrishna's Samkhya Karika is the earliest surviving systematic statement of the Samkhya school, built on the dualism of purusha, the conscious principle, and prakriti, the material principle.
• The Vaisheshika Sutra is ascribed to Kanada, and Prashastapada is its classical expositor through the Padarthadharmasangraha; the school is remembered for its analysis of reality into categories and for its atomistic account of matter.
• The six orthodox darshanas and their root texts — Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta — are the frame into which every philosophy pair in an MPSC matching column has to be placed, and they are conventionally taught as three pairs of allied systems.

• Matching titles without first sorting them by field: three of the four options here cross the astronomy–medicine–philosophy boundary in their opening pair and can be discarded on that ground alone
• Confusing Varahamihira with Aryabhata or Brahmagupta; all three are astronomers, but the Panchasiddhantika is specifically a digest of five earlier siddhantas and belongs to Varahamihira
• Being derailed by the Kanada–Prashastapada nuance in the fourth pair, when the item is already decided by a pair that carries no such complication
• Expecting exact orthography from this booklet, which prints Prashastapada as 'Prasatapada' in English and प्रसतपद in Marathi

MPSC likes to build a matching column out of names drawn from two or three different fields, because the mixing lets it test breadth rather than depth — a candidate who knows that Vagbhata is a physician and Varahamihira an astronomer answers the item without knowing either title in full. Expect ancient science and philosophy to appear in this format rather than as a standalone recall question. UPSC handles the same material through significance and evidence: it will ask what a named text is a source for, or set a statement pair about the content of a school's doctrine, so the pairing alone will not carry a candidate there. The efficient preparation for both is a single table of four columns — name, field, principal work, one line of doctrine or content — because the first three answer MPSC and the fourth answers UPSC.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Panchasiddhantika, which summarises the five astronomical systems current in India before its author's own time, was composed by which of the following ?

  • (a)Aryabhata
  • (b)Brahmagupta
  • (c)Varahamihira
  • (d)Bhaskara II

  Answer(c) Varahamihira — the sixth-century astronomer associated with Ujjain, who also wrote the Brihat Samhita and the Brihat Jataka. Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya, Brahmagupta the Brahmasphuta Siddhanta, and Bhaskara II the Siddhanta Shiromani, so all four names belong to the same tradition and are separated only by their principal works.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following three works together constitute the Brihat-trayi, the great triad of authority in the Ayurvedic tradition ?

  • (a)Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Ashtanga Sangraha
  • (b)Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Brihat Samhita
  • (c)Sushruta Samhita, Ashtanga Sangraha and Panchasiddhantika
  • (d)Charaka Samhita, Ashtanga Hridaya and Samkhya Karika

  Answer(a) Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Ashtanga Sangraha — Charaka on internal medicine, Sushruta on surgery, and Vagbhata's compendium organising the discipline into eight limbs. The Brihat Samhita and the Panchasiddhantika belong to Varahamihira's astronomical work and the Samkhya Karika to philosophy, so none of the other combinations stays inside the medical tradition.