SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 14 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.

Silappathikaram (the Jewelled Anklet), the earliest epic poem in Tamil was written in the 5 th - 6 th Century CE by _________.

(a)Tolkappiyar
(b)Tirumalisai Alwar
(c)Ilango Adigal
(d)Sittalai Sattanar

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Silappathikaram is attributed to Ilango Adigal, a Jain ascetic whom tradition makes the brother of the Chera king Senguttuvan.

The epic follows Kannagi and Kovalan, and the jewelled anklet of the title is the piece of evidence the whole plot turns on. It is counted among the five great epics of Tamil, the group that also contains Manimekalai.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Tolkappiyar — Tolkappiyar wrote the Tolkappiyam, the oldest surviving work of Tamil grammar and poetics. That is a treatise, not a narrative epic.
(b)
Tirumalisai Alwar — Tirumalisai Alwar was one of the twelve Alvars, the Vaishnava poet-saints whose hymns make up the Nalayira Divya Prabandham. His work is devotional verse, not epic.
(d)
Sittalai Sattanar — Sattanar wrote Manimekalai, the Buddhist epic that carries the same story forward through Manimekalai, the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi. It is the twin of this epic, not this epic.

Concept

Tamil has an unusually old literary record, and SSC mines it for author-to-work pairs. The twin epics sit at the head of that record: Silappathikaram by Ilango Adigal and its sequel Manimekalai by Sattanar.

Silappathikaram is a story of justice miscarried. Kovalan is wrongly executed over a stolen anklet, and his wife Kannagi proves his innocence by breaking open her own matching anklet in the Pandya court.

Learn the works as a set with Tolkappiyam, the grammar, so that a stem naming any one of the three does not send you to the wrong author.

The stem dates the epic to the fifth or sixth century CE. Scholarly dating is not settled and ranges wider than that, so carry the author into the exam hall rather than the century.

Key facts

Silappathikaram is attributed to Ilango Adigal and turns on Kannagi, Kovalan and the anklet that gives the epic its name.
Manimekalai, its sequel, was composed by Sattanar and follows the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi.
Tolkappiyam, by Tolkappiyar, is the oldest extant work of Tamil grammar and poetics.

Study next

The five great epics of Tamil and their authorsSangam literature: the Ettuthogai and Pattuppattu collectionsAlvars and Nayanars in the Tamil bhakti movement

Common traps

Swapping the twin epics, when Ilango Adigal wrote Silappathikaram and Sattanar wrote Manimekalai.
Reading Tolkappiyar as an epic poet when his work is a grammar.

SSC keeps a short stock of Tamil author-to-work pairs and asks them as fill-in-the-blank stems. Tolkappiyar and the Tolkappiyam were the pair in the same 2024 cycle — also asked 18 Sep 2024, 12:30, General Awareness Q.21.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.