Arrange the following saints in correct chronological order and select the correct answer from the code given below.
1. Nanak
2. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
3. Namdev
4. Kabir

Question

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Correct — B, 3, 4, 1, 2, that is Namdev → Kabir → Nanak → Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Namdev is the oldest of the four by a wide margin: the Marathi Varkari saint of Pandharpur is traditionally dated c. 1270-1350 (scholars who dispute those dates propose 1207-1287 or 1309-1372 — every one of them is 13th-14th century). Kabir comes next, in the 15th century; his exact years are genuinely uncertain, with historians divided between c. 1398-1448 and c. 1440-1518, but either bracket puts him before the two saints who follow. Guru Nanak was born on 15 April 1469 and died on 22 September 1539. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born on 18 February 1486 and died on 14 June 1534. Nanak is therefore the elder of that near-contemporary pair by seventeen years, which is exactly what separates option (b) from option (a).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This gets the first half right — Namdev then Kabir — and then reverses the last two. It places Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (born 1486) before Guru Nanak (born 1469), when Nanak was the elder by seventeen years and had already begun his udasis (travels) while Chaitanya was a boy in Navadvipa. This is the option the question is built to catch: (a) and (b) are identical except for that final swap.  (c) It opens with Kabir before Namdev. Namdev belongs to the 13th-14th century Varkari tradition of Maharashtra; Kabir belongs to 15th-century Varanasi. Even on the earliest date any historian gives Kabir (1398), Namdev had been dead roughly fifty years. The candidate who marks this is usually thinking of the two men as fellow north-Indian nirguna poets because both appear in the Guru Granth Sahib — but sharing a scripture does not make them contemporaries.  (d) It carries both mistakes at once — Kabir placed before Namdev, and Chaitanya placed before Nanak. It is in fact the exact reverse of the correct sequence, which is a common shape for the 'safety' distractor in UPPSC's chronology codes.

Concept: The Bhakti movement is not one wave but a long relay: it begins with the Alvars and Nayanars of the Tamil country, is given philosophical shape by Shankaracharya and then Ramanuja, and reaches northern and western India between the 13th and 16th centuries. The four saints in this question mark that later stretch. Namdev is a Varkari of Maharashtra, devoted to Vithoba of Pandharpur. Kabir is the sharpest voice of the nirguna (formless-God) stream in the Ganga valley, hostile to ritual and to caste in both Hinduism and Islam. Guru Nanak founded Sikhism and became the first of its ten Gurus. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism in Bengal and made congregational singing of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra the centre of worship.

State PCS 2025 Q56 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q56 — Art & Culture PYQ with Answer