Match List-I with List-II and choose the correct answer using the codes given below the lists :
List-I (Essayist)
A. Devana Bhatta
B. Hemadri
C. Madhvacharya
D. Ballal Sen
List-II (Treatise)
1. Dan Sa

Question

Match List-I with List-II and choose the correct answer using the codes given below the lists :
List-I (Essayist)
A. Devana Bhatta
B. Hemadri
C. Madhvacharya
D. Ballal Sen
List-II (Treatise)
1. Dan Sagar
2. Parashar Madhav
3. Chaturvarga Chintamani
4. Smriti Chandrika
Codes :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1: Devana Bhatta – Smriti Chandrika, Hemadri – Chaturvarga Chintamani, Madhvacharya – Parashar Madhav, Ballal Sen – Dan Sagar. All four are nibandhas, the great medieval digests of dharmashastra: works that collected the scattered rulings of the smritis on gifts, vows, inheritance, penance and ritual and tried to reconcile them into usable law. Devanna Bhatta, a southern jurist writing at some point between about AD 1150 and 1225, compiled the Smriti Chandrika, 'the moonlight of the smritis' — a digest that became one of the leading authorities on Hindu law in the Deccan and the south, so A goes to 4. Hemadri, remembered in Maharashtra as Hemadpant, was the prime minister of the Seuna or Yadava kingdom of Devagiri from 1259 to 1274, serving Mahadeva and later Ramachandra; his Chaturvarga Chintamani, composed around AD 1260–1270, is an encyclopaedic treatise on dharma running to thousands of vratas with the manner of performing each, so B goes to 3. Madhavacharya — the scholar also known as Vidyaranya, who lived roughly 1296 to 1391 and became jagadguru of the Sringeri matha — wrote the Parashara Madhaviya, a commentary on the Parashara Smriti, so C goes to 2. And Ballala Sena, the Sena ruler of Bengal in the second half of the twelfth century, was himself an author: he composed the Dana Sagara, 'the ocean of gifts', in 1168 and began the Adbhuta Sagara in 1169, which his son Lakshmana Sena completed. So D goes to 1. There is a one-step route through this question worth learning as a technique. Ballal Sen is the only name in List-I that most candidates can attach to a treatise with certainty, because he is a king and 'the king who wrote the Dana Sagara' is a memorable fact; and D-1 appears in exactly one of the four codes. Fix that single pair and option (d) is the answer without checking anything else. One caution the paper itself invites: List-I spells the third name 'Madhvacharya', which is also the name of the thirteenth-century Dvaita philosopher of Udupi. The Parashara Madhaviya is not his — it belongs to Madhavacharya/Vidyaranya of Sringeri, a different man of a later century. The key pairs C with 2 on the strength of the treatise, which is the right reading; carry the distinction so a differently worded question cannot catch you.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Every pair is wrong. It makes Devana Bhatta the author of the Parashara Madhaviya, Hemadri the author of the Smriti Chandrika, Madhvacharya the author of the Dana Sagara and Ballal Sen the author of the Chaturvarga Chintamani. The last of these is the easiest to reject: the Chaturvarga Chintamani is Hemadri's encyclopaedic dharma digest, written in the Yadava court of the Deccan, and could not be the work of a Sena king of Bengal a century earlier.  (b) Only the Madhvacharya–Parashar Madhav pair is right; the other three are shuffled. It hands the Dana Sagara to Devana Bhatta and the Chaturvarga Chintamani to Ballal Sen, when in fact the Dana Sagara is the treatise Ballala Sena wrote in 1168 and the Chaturvarga Chintamani is Hemadri's. It also gives the Smriti Chandrika to Hemadri, whose digest is the Chaturvarga Chintamani.  (c) All four pairs are wrong. It gives the Chaturvarga Chintamani to Devana Bhatta, the Parashara Madhaviya to Hemadri, the Dana Sagara to Madhvacharya and the Smriti Chandrika to Ballal Sen. The Smriti Chandrika is the work of Devanna Bhatta, a southern jurist, and became an authority on Hindu law in the Deccan and the south; it is not a Bengal text and has no connection with the Sena court.

Concept: From roughly the eleventh century onwards, Hindu law was written less through new smritis than through commentaries and digests. A commentary (tika or bhashya) explains one text — Vijnaneshvara's Mitakshara on the Yajnavalkya Smriti, Madhavacharya's Parashara Madhaviya on the Parashara Smriti. A digest (nibandha) instead gathers rulings from many smritis on a chosen subject and tries to reconcile them — Devanna Bhatta's Smriti Chandrika, Hemadri's Chaturvarga Chintamani, Ballala Sena's Dana Sagara, Jimutavahana's Dayabhaga. These works are what Indian courts actually applied for centuries, which is why the two great schools of Hindu inheritance law are named after texts of this kind, Mitakshara and Dayabhaga, and why UPSC once asked plainly who the famous jurists of medieval India were.

State PCS 2024 Q44 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q44 — History PYQ with Answer