MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 94 of 100

Correct — option (2), which pairs Kashi with Ashwasena, Kosal with Prasenjit, Magadha with Bimbisara and Vatsa with Udayan. Before working through the pairs, note the layout. The two lists are printed side by side under their own headings, the mahajanapadas on the left labelled (a) to (d) and the kings on the right labelled (i) to (iv), and the fact that Kashi is printed opposite Bimbisara means nothing at all — side-by-side printing in a match question is typesetting, never an answer. The pairs themselves are best established from the two you are surest of. Magadha and Bimbisara is the anchor: Bimbisara, son of Bhattiya, founded the Haryanka dynasty, is traditionally placed on the throne from 543 to 492 BCE, ruled first from Girivraja, identified with Rajagriha, and annexed the neighbouring kingdom of Anga, laying the foundation on which Magadha would later build an empire. Kosal and Prasenjit is the second anchor: Prasenajit, called Pasenadi in Pali, ruled Kosala from Shravasti, was educated at Taxila, and is one of the best-recorded contemporaries of the Buddha, of whom he was a lay follower and for whom he built monasteries. The two men were connected by marriage in both directions — Bimbisara's first wife Kosala Devi was Prasenajit's sister and brought Kashi to Magadha as her dowry, while Prasenajit's own first queen was a Magadhan princess, Bimbisara's sister. Vatsa and Udayan is the third pair. The Vatsa kingdom lay south of the Ganga with its capital at Kausambi on the Yamuna, and its king Udayana is the hero of the classical plays attributed to Bhasa, the Svapnavasavadatta and the Pratijna-Yaugandharayana, which describe him as a scion of the Bharata family. That leaves Kashi with Ashwasena, and the pairing is right on its own evidence: in the Jain tradition Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, was born at Varanasi to King Ashvasena and Queen Vamadevi of the Ikshvaku lineage, and Varanasi was the capital of Kashi. Since option (2) is the only one that carries all four of these pairs, it is the answer. Notice how little is needed to get there: fixing Magadha to Bimbisara alone eliminates options (1), (3) and (4) at a stroke, because all three assign Magadha to someone else.

• (1)(a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii) — This option makes three separate errors and shows the pattern the setter is using — the names are shuffled around a correct set rather than replaced. It gives Kashi to Udayan, but Udayana was the king of Vatsa, whose capital was Kausambi on the Yamuna and whose story is told in the plays attributed to Bhasa. It gives Kosal to Bimbisara, but Bimbisara belongs to Magadha and the Haryanka dynasty; the connection between Bimbisara and Kosala was one of marriage, since his first wife Kosala Devi was the sister of the Kosalan king, and that link is precisely what makes this misassignment plausible. And it gives Magadha to Prasenjit, reversing the two great contemporaries of the Buddha's lifetime. A candidate who is certain of a single pair can dispose of this option; the pair to be certain of is Magadha and Bimbisara, which is the most frequently examined fact in the whole topic.
• (3)(a) - (i), (b) - (iii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (ii) — This option assigns Kashi to Bimbisara, and the error is an interesting one because it is half true in a way the question does not accept. Kashi did come under Magadhan control, but as dowry rather than as Bimbisara's own kingdom: his marriage to Kosala Devi, sister of Prasenajit, brought Kashi to Magadha and also ended the hostility between the two states, leaving Bimbisara free to deal with his other neighbours. The question, however, asks which king belongs to which mahajanapada, and Bimbisara belongs to Magadha. The option then compounds the error by giving Kosal to Udayan, who ruled Vatsa, Magadha to Prasenjit, who ruled Kosala, and Vatsa to Ashwasena, who belongs to Kashi. Every one of the four pairs is wrong, which is a useful reminder that in a match question a single verified pair is worth more than a general familiarity with all the names.
• (4)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (i) — This option gives Kashi to Prasenjit, Kosal to Udayan, Magadha to Ashwasena and Vatsa to Bimbisara, and it is wrong in all four places. Two of the errors are again near-misses of the kind that make a shuffled option feel possible: Kosala did in fact absorb Kashi, so a candidate who remembers a Kashi-Kosala connection may accept the first pair without noticing that Prasenajit ruled from Shravasti as king of Kosala; and Ashvasena, being a king of Varanasi in the Jain tradition and the father of Parshvanatha, has no connection with Magadha at all beyond belonging to the same broad period of tradition. The safest technique in a four-pair match is to work from the pair you can prove, strike out every option inconsistent with it, and only then check the remaining option in full. Here Magadha and Bimbisara does the work by itself.

The sixth century BCE in northern India is the age of the sixteen mahajanapadas, the great states listed in the Buddhist Anguttara Nikaya: Anga, Magadha, Kashi, Kosala, Vajji, Malla, Chedi, Vatsa, Kuru, Panchala, Matsya, Surasena, Assaka, Avanti, Gandhara and Kamboja. Some were monarchies and some, such as the Vajji confederacy of Vaishali and the Mallas, were ganasanghas governed by assemblies of clan chiefs. Four of the monarchies came to dominate the rest — Magadha, Kosala, Vatsa and Avanti — and the political history of the period is the story of their competition, won in the end by Magadha. Kashi, with its capital at Varanasi, was among the wealthiest but was absorbed by Kosala and then passed to Magadha; Kosala, ruled from Shravasti by Prasenajit, was the great rival of Magadha in the Buddha's lifetime, and the two houses were bound by marriages in both directions; Vatsa, with its capital Kausambi on the Yamuna, was ruled by Udayana, whose romantic career became the subject of Sanskrit drama; and Magadha, under Bimbisara of the Haryanka dynasty and then his son Ajatashatru, absorbed Anga, took Kashi as dowry and eventually overcame both Kosala and the Vajjis. Magadha's advantages are worth remembering as a list: the iron ores of the south, control of the Ganga for trade, fertile alluvium, elephants from the eastern forests, and capitals at Rajagriha and later Pataliputra that were exceptionally defensible.

Match-the-columns is the most heavily used format in this particular paper — eight questions are built on it, the most of any MPSC edition so far — so a candidate should approach it with a method rather than with recall alone. The method has three steps. First, ignore the layout: the two columns are printed beside each other because the reader has to match them, and the row a name happens to occupy carries no information. Second, find the single pair you can prove and eliminate every option inconsistent with it; in a well-set four-pair question that step usually leaves one or two options standing. Third, verify the survivor completely rather than assuming it. For the mahajanapadas the provable pair is nearly always Magadha and Bimbisara, because that is the pairing every textbook repeats. The topic itself is a favourite of every commission because it is finite, uncontested and easy to mark: sixteen states, their capitals, their leading kings and the four contenders for supremacy. It is worth adding that this paper's Marathi column prints the heading in the plural, महाजनपदे, where the English prints the singular Mahajanapada, and that the option grid in both columns carries the same sequence of numerals; neither point affects the answer.

• Bimbisara, son of Bhattiya, founded the Haryanka dynasty of Magadha, is traditionally dated to 543-492 BCE, ruled from Girivraja identified with Rajagriha, and annexed the kingdom of Anga to the east.
• Prasenajit, called Pasenadi in the Pali sources, ruled Kosala from Shravasti, studied at Taxila and was a prominent lay follower of the Buddha for whom he built monasteries.
• Bimbisara's first wife Kosala Devi was the sister of Prasenajit and brought Kashi to Magadha as dowry, ending the hostility between the two kingdoms; Prasenajit's own first queen was a Magadhan princess.
• Vatsa lay south of the Ganga with its capital at Kausambi on the Yamuna, and its king Udayana is the hero of the Svapnavasavadatta and the Pratijna-Yaugandharayana attributed to Bhasa, in which he is described as a scion of the Bharata family.
• In the Jain tradition Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, was born at Varanasi to King Ashvasena and Queen Vamadevi of the Ikshvaku lineage, and Varanasi was the capital of the Kashi mahajanapada.

• Reading the side-by-side printing of the two lists as though the adjacent rows were already paired; the layout of a match question is never an answer
• Pairing Bimbisara with Kashi because Kashi came to Magadha as the dowry of his Kosalan queen; the question asks for the king's own kingdom, which is Magadha
• Reversing Bimbisara and Prasenajit, the two great contemporary kings of the Buddha's lifetime, whose houses were linked by marriage in both directions
• Forgetting Ashvasena, the least familiar of the four names, and therefore assigning Kashi by elimination to whichever king is left over in a wrongly built option

The mahajanapadas are examined in three shapes — the state and its capital, the state and its king, and the reasons for the rise of Magadha — and the first two are set as match questions more often than as direct ones. This paper carries eight match questions in all, so the format itself deserves practice: eliminate on one certain pair, never read adjacency as a pairing, and check the surviving option in full before marking it. The pairs most often used are Magadha with Rajagriha and Bimbisara, Kosala with Shravasti and Prasenajit, Vatsa with Kausambi and Udayana, and Avanti with Ujjain and Pradyota, and a candidate who holds those four rows can answer nearly every question the topic yields. Less familiar names such as Ashvasena appear precisely to break a candidate who is working purely by elimination, so it is worth learning the Jain and Buddhist traditions attached to Kashi and Varanasi along with the political history.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following pairs of mahajanapada and its capital is correctly matched ?

  • (a)Vatsa — Shravasti
  • (b)Kosala — Kausambi
  • (c)Magadha — Girivraja (Rajagriha)
  • (d)Kashi — Ujjain

  Answer(c) Magadha — Girivraja (Rajagriha). Bimbisara ruled Magadha from Girivraja, identified with Rajagriha, and the capital was later moved to Pataliputra. Of the other pairs, Shravasti was the capital of Kosala and not of Vatsa; Kausambi, on the Yamuna, was the capital of Vatsa and not of Kosala; and the capital of Kashi was Varanasi, Ujjain being the capital of Avanti.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  How did Kashi come under the control of Magadha in the time of Bimbisara ?

  • (a)By conquest after the defeat of Prasenajit at Shravasti
  • (b)As the dowry of Kosala Devi, the Kosalan princess whom Bimbisara married
  • (c)By a treaty concluded with the Vajji confederacy of Vaishali
  • (d)By the voluntary submission of the merchants of Varanasi

  Answer(b) As the dowry of Kosala Devi, the Kosalan princess whom Bimbisara married. She was the sister of Prasenajit of Kosala, and the marriage both brought Kashi to Magadha and ended the hostility between the two kingdoms, leaving Bimbisara free to deal with his other neighbours. Bimbisara's use of marriage alliances was systematic: his other wives included Chellana, a Licchavi princess of Vaishali, and Kshema, a daughter of the chief of Madra.