Match List I with List II
List-I List-II
Places in Ancient India Presently in which State
a) Karnasuvarna 1) Maharashtra
b) Pragjyotish 2) Gujarat
c) Girnar 3) West Be

Question

Match List I with List II
List-I    List-II
Places in Ancient India    Presently in which State
a)    Karnasuvarna    1)    Maharashtra
b)    Pragjyotish    2)    Gujarat
c)    Girnar    3)    West Bengal
d)    Pratishthan    4)    Assam
Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
a    b    c    d

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, 3 4 2 1. A match-list is four separate questions wearing one code, so settle each row on its own evidence before you look at the options. (a) Karnasuvarna → 3, West Bengal. Karnasuvarna, the Bengali Kansona or 'gold of the ear', was the capital of the Gauda kingdom under Shashanka, the first major king of ancient Bengal, in the early seventh century CE. Its ruins stand at Kansona and Rangamati about 9.6 km south-west of Berhampore in Murshidabad district, West Bengal, and the mounds locally called Raja Karna's Palace at Rangamati are on the ASI's list of Monuments of National Importance. Xuanzang recorded a great Vajrayana establishment beside it, Lo-to-mo-chi or Raktamrittika Mahavihara, identified with the excavated site of Rajbaridanga on the Bhagirathi. (b) Pragjyotish → 4, Assam. Pragjyotisha is the older name of the kingdom later called Kamarupa, and its capital Pragjyotishpura is identified with modern Guwahati. Kamarupa enters datable history in Samudragupta's Allahabad Pillar inscription, which lists it among the frontier kingdoms that paid tribute to the Gupta emperor; its best-known ruler, Bhaskaravarman of the Varman line (c. 600–650 CE), allied with Harshavardhana against Shashanka and received Xuanzang at his court around 643 CE. (c) Girnar → 2, Gujarat. Girnar is the hill immediately east of Junagadh in the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat, and the granite boulder at its foot is one of the densest historical documents in India: it carries Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts, the Junagadh inscription of the Western Satrap Rudradaman I from shortly after 150 CE — twenty lines of prose, the first long record in more or less standard Sanskrit — and, above them, an inscription of the Gupta emperor Skandagupta. (d) Pratishthan → 1, Maharashtra. Pratishthana is modern Paithan on the north bank of the Godavari in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) district, Maharashtra, capital of the Satavahanas from the second century BCE to the second century CE, and one of the very few inland Indian towns named in the first-century Greek Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. So a-3, b-4, c-2, d-1 — which is exactly the code printed against option (b).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Inverts the whole table: Karnasuvarna to Assam, Pragjyotish to West Bengal, Girnar to Maharashtra, Pratishthan to Gujarat — every pair wrong. The east–east swap has a real historical hook behind it, because after Shashanka's death Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa did make Karnasuvarna his jayaskandhavara or victory camp, and issued the Nidhanpur copper plates from there. A candidate who half-remembers that link swaps the two names.  (c) The dangerous one, because it agrees with the key on two of the four rows. It reads Karnasuvarna to West Bengal and Pratishthan to Maharashtra correctly, then swaps the middle pair — Pragjyotish to Gujarat and Girnar to Assam. Anyone who is sure of the Bengal and Deccan rows but hazy on the other two picks between (b) and (c) on a coin toss; one fact, Girnar being the Junagadh hill in Gujarat, is the whole difference.  (d) Scores zero: Karnasuvarna to Assam, Pragjyotish to Gujarat, Girnar to Maharashtra, Pratishthan to West Bengal. The last pair is the giveaway — there is no Bengal town called Pratishthana. The homonym worth knowing is elsewhere: Pratishthanpur, modern Jhusi across the Ganga from Prayagraj, lies in Uttar Pradesh, and it is not the Satavahana capital the examiner means.

Concept: Ancient Indian geography was written in the vocabulary of janapadas, kingdoms and capitals, not of states, and each of the four names in List-I is the label of a distinct regional polity that modern administrative maps have since renamed. Karnasuvarna stands for Gauda, the seventh-century power of the lower Ganga delta whose king Shashanka fought Harshavardhana. Pragjyotisha stands for Kamarupa, the Brahmaputra valley kingdom of the Varmans that the epics already knew as the country of Naraka and Bhagadatta. Girnar stands for Surashtra-Anarta, the Kathiawar peninsula that the Mauryas, the Western Satraps and the Guptas each governed in turn and each recorded on the same rock. Pratishthana stands for Dakshinapatha, the Deccan of the Satavahanas, the first great post-Mauryan power south of the Vindhyas. Read that way the exercise is not four isolated place names but four regions — Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra — and the names survive in living form: Kansona, Kamrup district, Girnar hill and Paithan town all still exist under those names today, which is exactly why the examiner can ask 'presently in which State'.

State PCS 2025 Q86 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q86 — History PYQ with Answer