SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 23 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 5 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

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SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following fiscal terms related to Gupta dynasty is correctly matched?

(a)Utkhetayita – temple priest
(b)Bhaga – judicial fee
(c)Vaishthika – forced labour
(d)Dasaparadha – annual cattle tax

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Vaishthika comes from vishti, the forced, unpaid labour that villagers owed the king. D.C. Sircar's Indian Epigraphical Glossary explains vishti as 'unpaid labour'.

So 'Vaishthika – forced labour' is the correctly matched pair, while each of the rest gives a real term the wrong meaning → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Utkhetayita – temple priest — Utkhetayita is an officer, not a priest. Sircar explains it, from Assam records, as a tax-collector in charge of the impost called utkhetana.
(b)
Bhaga – judicial fee — Bhaga was the king's share of the produce, originally one-sixth of the grain, as Sircar explains it. A fee for judicial proceedings is something else.
(d)
Dasaparadha – annual cattle tax — Dasaparadha means 'the ten offences', and in grants it stands for the fines for those offences. It is not a tax on cattle.

Concept

Gupta-era land grants list the dues a village paid, because a grant handed them over to the donee. Bhaga was the king's share of the produce, bhoga the periodical supplies made by tenants, and hiranya the tax in cash.

Grants also dealt with vishti, labour the state could demand without pay, and with dasaparadha, the fines for ten offences.

Utkhetayita is known from Assam records, so it is not strictly a Gupta court title. The question groups it with Gupta fiscal terms anyway, and its meaning, tax-collector, still rules it out.

Key facts

Vishti: forced, unpaid labour owed to the king.
Bhaga: the king's share of the produce, originally one-sixth of the grain.
Dasaparadha: the fines for the ten offences.
Utkhetayita: a tax-collector in charge of the impost called utkhetana, known from Assam records.

Study next

Bhoga and hiranya: the other dues named in Gupta land grantsGupta officers: Pustapala, Talavataka and BhandagaradhikritaAgrahara grants and what the donee received

Common traps

Treating bhaga as any payment — it is specifically the king's share of the crop.
Reading dasaparadha as a tax because it sits among the dues — it is a set of fines.

The same terms return as term–meaning pairs: vaishthika is keyed as forced or corvée labour at 16 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.3, bhaga as the king's share of produce at 17 Sep 2025, 12:30, GA Q.3, and dasaparadha as fines from ten offences at 19 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.3.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: History — all 218 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.