While living in which Ashram did a person have to perform the rituals of Panch Mahayagya ?

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Correct — B, Grihastha Ashram. The Panch Mahayajnas are the five 'great sacrifices' laid down as the daily duty of the householder: brahma-yajna (study and recitation of the Vedas, the debt to the sages), deva-yajna (the fire offering, homa, to the gods), pitri-yajna (tarpana, the offering to the ancestors), bhuta-yajna (bali, food set aside for all creatures) and manushya-yajna or atithi-yajna (hospitality to the guest). Every one of these presupposes what only a grihastha has — a home, a maintained domestic fire, dependants, guests at the door and the means to feed others. The Grihya Sutras and Manusmriti (Chapter III) prescribe them precisely for the householder, and this is the stage in which the three rinas (debts) — to the rishis, the devas and the pitris — are discharged.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The student stage. The brahmachari's duties are Vedic study under a guru, celibacy, service and living on alms — he keeps no household of his own, no domestic fire and no dependants, so the five daily offerings that revolve around the home cannot be his obligation. He is in fact one of those whom the householder supports.  (c) The forest-dweller does not drop the five great sacrifices — Manusmriti VI.4-5 has him carry the sacred fires and domestic implements into the forest and go on offering them with wild food. But they are the householder's defining daily round, sustained from his own hearth and stores, which is what the question is asking about.  (d) The renunciant abandons the sacred fires and outward ritual altogether — the fires are said to be internalised — and lives by begging. Since the mahayajnas are fire-and-household observances, they are the one thing sanyasa formally sets aside.

Concept: The ashrama scheme divides an ideal life into four stages — brahmacharya (student), grihastha (householder), vanaprastha (forest-dweller) and sanyasa (renunciant) — and assigns a different set of duties to each. The householder stage is the economically and ritually productive one: it supports the other three, and it carries the daily ritual load, of which the Panch Mahayajna is the core. The whole scheme, together with varna, forms the varnashrama-dharma of the Dharmashastra texts.

State PCS 2025 Q67 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q67 — History PYQ with Answer