What is the name of the one month long cattle fair organized at the confluence of Ganga and Gandak rivers ?

Question

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Correct — B, Sonepur Mela. Sonepur stands at the point where the Gandak ends: the river rises in Nepal as the Kali Gandaki, becomes the Narayani, enters India as the Gandak, runs some 300 km southeast across the Bihar plain through West Champaran, Gopalganj, East Champaran, Saran, Muzaffarpur and Vaishali, and empties into the Ganga at Sonpur, opposite Patna. The fair held there is described by the Saran district administration in its own words as making Sonepur 'internationally famous for the large fair held on the occasion of Kartik Purnima'. Its other name, Harihar Kshetra Mela, comes from the Hariharnath temple at the site, where Hari (Vishnu) and Hara (Shiva) are worshipped together, and from the Gajendra Moksha legend of Vishnu rescuing the elephant from the crocodile — which is one reason elephants were historically the fair's most famous merchandise. The district administration explains the timing: 'During Kartik Purnima Ganga Snan or ceremonial bathing in the Ganga is held by Hindus to be unusually efficacious. On the day of full moon (Kartik Purnima) immense crowd assembles and take bath. The Mela commences on that day.' The fair is widely reckoned the largest cattle fair in Asia, is organised by the Bihar State Tourism Development Corporation, and falls in November–December. On the stem's 'one month long', be precise rather than dogmatic: the district administration says it 'lasts for more than a fortnight', and the fair is commonly reported as running anywhere from about a fortnight to a full month — in 2018, for instance, from 21 November to 22 December. The month is the popular and usual description rather than a fixed statutory duration, and the answer does not turn on it.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Katihar is a real district of eastern Bihar, and a busy railway junction, but there is no cattle fair of this name and standing there — and, decisively, it fails the geography in the stem. Katihar lies far to the east near the Bihar–West Bengal border, nowhere near the Gandak, which ends its course at Sonpur next to Patna.  (c) Purnia is likewise a genuine district of the Seemanchal region in north-eastern Bihar, in the Kosi–Mahananda country, and equally distant from the Ganga–Gandak confluence. Naming two real districts is what makes this option set work on a candidate who knows Bihar's map only loosely, since both names sound as though they could carry a fair.  (d) This can be true only if at least two of the first three options answer the stem, and here only one place can: a confluence is a single point on the map, and the Gandak meets the Ganga at exactly one place, Sonpur. Since neither Katihar nor Purnia is on that confluence, no second option can be added to the first.

Concept: Bihar's geography is made by rivers that come down from Nepal and end in the Ganga, and its calendar of fairs follows them. The Gandak is one of the great left-bank tributaries: its catchment of about 46,300 sq km lies mostly in Nepal, its basin contains three peaks above 8,000 m — Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna — it crosses into India in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh and enters Bihar at Valmikinagar in West Champaran, where the Gandak barrage stands, before finishing at Sonpur. Where a big tributary joins the Ganga, three things tend to coincide: a bathing site of religious merit, a temple town, and a market. Sonpur has all three. The bathing day is Kartik Purnima, the full moon of the month of Kartik, when the ritual dip in the Ganga is held to be especially meritorious; the temple is Hariharnath, whose present structure is attributed to Raja Ram Narain of the late Mughal period, with earlier repairs credited to Raja Man Singh; and the market grew into a livestock fair that once drew traders from as far as Delhi and Tamil Nadu. Tradition holds that the fair was originally held across the river at Hajipur, with only the puja performed at Sonpur, and that it moved to Sonpur under Aurangzeb.

State PCS 2024 Q108 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q108 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer