NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 111 of 149

Correct — D, He wrote his magnum opus Amuktamalyada in Sanskrit. The statement is wrong on the language. Amuktamalyada is a Telugu poem, composed by Krishnadevaraya himself and dedicated to the Vaishnava saint tradition of the Tamil country; it retells the story of Andal and her father Vishnuchitta, which is why the work is also known as Vishnuchittiyam. Krishnadevaraya did write in Sanskrit as well — several Sanskrit works are attributed to him — but the book named here, and the one he is remembered for, is in Telugu. Every other statement in the list holds, so the false one is the language claim.

• (a)He was a great scholar of Telugu and Sanskrit — This is true, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking for the incorrect statement. He was himself a Telugu poet and a patron of Telugu letters, his court is remembered for the group of poets called the Ashtadiggajas, and Sanskrit compositions are credited to him too.
• (b)Foreign travellers Paes and Nuniz visited his court — This is treated as true. Domingo Paes, a Portuguese visitor, was at Vijayanagara in about 1520-22, during Krishnadevaraya's own reign, and left the famous description of the king. Fernao Nuniz came a little later, in about 1535-37, and wrote a history of the empire; textbooks bracket the two Portuguese writers together as the observers of Krishnadevaraya's Vijayanagara, and the paper accepts the pairing.
• (c)Barbosa praised him for the great justice and equity prevailing in his empire — This is true. Duarte Barbosa, another Portuguese writer of the early sixteenth century, described the freedom and the even-handed justice enjoyed by people of every faith in the empire, and that passage is quoted in the standard textbook accounts.

Krishnadevaraya, who ruled from 1509 to 1529, was the greatest king of the Tuluva line at Vijayanagara, with his capital at the city whose ruins survive at Hampi. His reign is unusually well documented because it drew a stream of Portuguese visitors from newly acquired Goa, and because the king was himself an author and a patron of authors. He captured the fort of Raichur from the Bijapur Sultan in 1520, campaigned successfully against the Gajapati ruler of Orissa early in his reign, and left temples and gopurams that still stand.

The trap in the question is not the history but the language. Everyone remembers that Krishnadevaraya wrote Amuktamalyada; far fewer remember that the language is Telugu, and 'Sanskrit' slipped into the sentence looks harmless. A second detail is worth carrying honestly: of the two Portuguese writers named in option (b), only Paes was actually at Vijayanagara during Krishnadevaraya's lifetime, since Nuniz arrived several years after the king's death in 1529 and wrote a history rather than an eyewitness account of that court. The paper counts the option as correct in the textbook sense, and the statement it wants you to reject is the one about the language.

• Krishnadevaraya ruled Vijayanagara from 1509 to 1529 and belonged to the Tuluva dynasty; his capital city is the site now called Hampi.
• Amuktamalyada, his best known work, is written in Telugu and is also known as Vishnuchittiyam.
• Domingo Paes visited Vijayanagara around 1520-22 and described the king; Fernao Nuniz wrote his account around 1535-37, after Krishnadevaraya's death.
• He took the fort of Raichur from Ismail Adil Shah of Bijapur in 1520.

• Attaching the wrong language to Amuktamalyada; the work is in Telugu.
• Mixing up the foreign visitors and their periods — Abdur Razzaq belongs to Devaraya II's reign, not to Krishnadevaraya's.
• Forgetting that a NOT question rewards the single false statement, so three plausible-sounding true statements are meant to be left alone.

NDA asks which statement about a named ruler is incorrect, or asks which traveller described which court.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Amuktamalyada, the well-known work of Krishnadevaraya, was composed in

  • (a)Sanskrit
  • (b)Telugu
  • (c)Kannada
  • (d)Tamil

  Answer(b) Telugu — the poem, also called Vishnuchittiyam, is the king's own Telugu composition.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following dynasties did Krishnadevaraya belong to?

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

  Answer(c) Tuluva — he was the third and greatest ruler of the Tuluva line at Vijayanagara.