NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 72 of 146

Correct — C, Imposing high taxes. Taxation in ancient India was the ordinary fiscal machinery of the state. Revenue paid for the army, the officials and the court, and every settled kingdom collected it — a chief who taxed heavily was not thereby announcing that he outranked other rulers, and a resented tax burden was as likely to damage a king's standing as to raise it. The other three options are exactly the devices the sources show rulers using to advertise superiority — divine association, grand titles, and a record of conquest.

• (a)Identifying with a variety of deities — This was a standard status claim. Kushana rulers took the title meaning 'son of god' — the Rabatak inscription describes Kanishka as a king of kings and a son of god — and later dynasties advertised their devotion to a chosen deity in their own titles.
• (b)Assuming pompous titles — Grandiose titles were the most visible way of ranking oneself above neighbouring rulers. Names such as maharaja-adhiraja, 'great king of kings', were adopted precisely to signal a rung above the ordinary raja.
• (d)Conquests and annexation of territories — Military success was routinely turned into a status claim. Court eulogies existed to record it — Samudragupta's conquests were set down in the Prayag Prashasti composed by his court poet Harishena and inscribed on an old Ashokan pillar.

Kingship in ancient India was not self-evident; a ruler had to be seen to be more than a powerful landholder. Three strategies recur in the inscriptional record. Rulers linked themselves to the divine, by taking god-derived titles or by having images of themselves placed in shrines. They adopted composite titles that stacked kingship on kingship. And they had their military campaigns turned into formal eulogies, or prashastis, carved on pillars and rock faces where they would be read for centuries.

Sort the four options into 'display' and 'administration'. Divine identification, inflated titles and recorded conquest are all display — they exist to be seen and repeated. Tax collection is administration; it is how a state pays for itself, and it appears in the sources as revenue policy rather than as a boast. Do not be misled by the fact that taxes were central to kingship. Being central is not the same as being a claim to higher status, and that is the distinction the question is drawing.

• The Rabatak inscription refers to the Kushana ruler Kanishka as a king of kings and a son of god.
• Titles such as maharaja-adhiraja, meaning great king of kings, were used to place a ruler above ordinary kings.
• The Prayag Prashasti, a eulogy of Samudragupta composed by his court poet Harishena, was inscribed on an Ashokan pillar and records his campaigns.
• Taxation supplied the revenue for the army and administration, which is a fiscal function rather than a claim to superior rank.

• Reading 'NOT' too quickly and picking a genuine status-claim option.
• Assuming that anything central to kingship must also be a status claim.
• Confusing royal ritual sacrifices, which were status claims, with the tax revenue that paid for them.

Asked as an odd-one-out on kingship strategies, as a source-based item on a named inscription, or as a match item pairing a ruler with a title.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Prayag Prashasti, which records the campaigns of Samudragupta, was composed by

  • (a)Kalidasa
  • (b)Harishena
  • (c)Vishakhadatta
  • (d)Banabhatta

  Answer(b) Harishena — the court poet of Samudragupta, whose eulogy was inscribed on an Ashokan pillar at Allahabad.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The title 'devaputra', meaning son of god, is most closely associated with the rulers of which dynasty?

  • (a)Kushana
  • (b)Satavahana
  • (c)Chola
  • (d)Pala

  Answer(a) Kushana — the Rabatak inscription describes Kanishka as a king of kings and a son of god.