SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 17 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 15 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Who among the following rulers built five astronomical observatories at different places in north India?

(a)Madho Singh
(b)Maharana Pratap
(c)Sawai Mansingh
(d)Sawai Jaisingh II

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The five observatories are the Jantar Mantars, and they were built by Sawai Jai Singh II, the Kachhwaha ruler of Amber who founded Jaipur.

He placed them at Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Mathura and Varanasi. Each is a set of masonry instruments rather than lenses, built large so that a reading could be taken more finely than a small brass instrument allowed.

The paper spells the name Sawai Jaisingh II — option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Madho Singh — The five observatories are credited to Jai Singh II alone. Madho Singh is a later name in the Jaipur line and no observatory in this group is attached to him.
(b)
Maharana Pratap — Maharana Pratap ruled Mewar in the sixteenth century and is remembered for his resistance to Akbar, most famously at Haldighati. Nothing in his record is astronomical.
(c)
Sawai Mansingh — The confusable name. Man Singh I of Amber was Akbar's general a century before Jai Singh II, and Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur belongs to the twentieth century.

Concept

Sawai Jai Singh II, who ruled Amber and then Jaipur in the early eighteenth century, was a ruler who practised observational astronomy himself.

Dissatisfied with the astronomical tables then in use, he built five open-air observatories of stone and masonry instruments — the Jantar Mantar — to measure time, declination and the positions of the sun and planets.

The Jaipur observatory is the largest and best preserved of the five, and it carries UNESCO World Heritage status.

SSC asks builder-rulers by what they built. The giveaway words in this stem are astronomical observatories and north India, which together point at one name.

Key facts

Sawai Jai Singh II built observatories at Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Mathura and Varanasi.
The instruments are masonry and not optical, the Samrat Yantra at Jaipur being a giant sundial.
Jai Singh II founded the city of Jaipur in 1727.
The Jantar Mantar at Jaipur was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2010.

Study next

Instruments of the Jantar Mantar such as the Samrat Yantra, Jai Prakash Yantra and Ram YantraThe founding and grid plan of Jaipur under Jai Singh IIRajput rulers in Mughal service including Man Singh I and Jai Singh I

Common traps

Reading 'Sawai Mansingh' as the same person because both names carry the Sawai title of Jaipur.
Placing all five observatories in Rajasthan. Only the Jaipur one is in that state.

SSC asks this either as the builder of the observatories or as the founder of Jaipur. Rajasthan's cultural spread turns up in the same recall shape at 12 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.23, which asks which state holds the Gangaur Festival and the Pushkar Fair.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.