Which cave of Bagh (District Dhar) is called 'Rang Mahal' ?

Question

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Correct — C, the fourth cave. Cave 4 of the Bagh group is popularly called 'Rang Mahal' — literally the palace of colour — because it preserved the richest surviving painted plaster of the whole complex. The Bagh caves are Buddhist rock-cut viharas on the Baghini river in Dhar district, and their murals are, along with Ajanta's, the best-known example of Gupta-period painting in India; Cave 4 is the one that carries that reputation, which is why it earned the name.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Cave 2 is the large vihara popularly called 'Pandav Gufa' (Gomai) in local usage — a monastic hall with cells, not the painted 'Rang Mahal'.  (b) Cave 3 goes by the local name 'Hathkhana'. It is part of the same group but is not the cave the painting-derived name attaches to.  (d) Only a handful of the nine numbered Bagh caves survive in visitable condition, and the outer ones are plain or badly collapsed. The eighth is not the painted hall the name 'Rang Mahal' belongs to.

Concept: Bagh is a group of rock-cut Buddhist caves excavated into a sandstone hill above the Baghini river near Bagh town in Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, generally dated to about the 5th-6th century CE. They are viharas — monastic residences with cells around a pillared hall and a stupa shrine at the rear — and their fame rests on mural painting done on a lime-plaster ground, in the same tradition and roughly the same period as Ajanta. The individual caves carry popular names rather than only numbers, and Cave 4's name, Rang Mahal, comes straight from the colour on its walls.

State PCS 2025 Q97 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q97 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer