UKPSC Prelims 2024 General Studies Paper-I · Question 121 of 147

Correct — C, Dharmapala.

Vikramashila was founded by Dharmapala, the Pala ruler of eastern India whose reign spans the turn of the ninth century.

He was the son and successor of Gopala, who founded the Pala line, and the dynasty's Buddhist endowments went chiefly to Mahayana and Vajrayana establishments.

The monastery stood beside the Ganga in what is now Bhagalpur district, Bihar; its remains have been excavated at Antichak.

It became a centre of tantric learning, and Atisha Dipankara Srijnana, who carried Buddhism to Tibet in the eleventh century, served as one of its abbots.

The idea to carry away is that a mahavihara of this scale is typically founded by a ruling house, not by a philosopher.

Establishing one meant granting villages and revenue, so "who established it" is a question about kings and their patronage.

• (a)
  Kumaril Bhatta — Kumarila Bhatta was a philosopher rather than a ruler, and a monastic university on this scale was typically founded by a ruling house with villages and revenue to grant.

  He is the right answer to a question on the Purva Mimamsa school, whose defence of Vedic ritual and scriptural authority he argued in works such as the Shlokavarttika and the Tantravarttika.

  He is remembered as a champion of Brahmanical ritualism against Buddhist opponents, which sits awkwardly with founding a Buddhist mahavihara.

• (b)
  Madhavacharya — The name as printed is read two ways.

  One reading is Madhvacharya, who propounded the Dvaita, or dualist, school of Vedanta, holding the individual soul and the supreme being to be permanently distinct.

  The other is Madhava Vidyaranya, credited with the Sarvadarshanasangraha and traditionally linked with Vijayanagara.

  Either reading places the figure in the peninsular south and centuries after the Pala kings, so the chronology settles the option even before the name is resolved.

• (d)
  Pulakesin II — Pulakeshin II was a Chalukya ruler of Vatapi (Badami) in the Deccan during the first half of the seventh century — a different dynasty, a different region, and a period before the Palas rose in Bengal and Bihar.

  He is the right answer to a question on the king who checked Harshavardhana's advance on the Narmada, an achievement recorded in the Aihole inscription composed by his court poet Ravikirti.

A mahavihara was a large Buddhist monastic complex that also worked as a residential centre of higher learning — monks, teachers, libraries and students who came from well beyond India.

Such places ran largely on royal endowments: villages whose revenue paid for buildings, food and the copying of manuscripts.

That is why a question asking who "established" one is asking for a ruling house and its patron, not for a philosopher or a text.

• Vikramashila was founded by the Pala ruler Dharmapala, son and successor of Gopala, whose reign falls around the turn of the ninth century.
• Its excavated remains lie at Antichak, in Bhagalpur district of Bihar, near the Ganga.
• Dharmapala is also credited with the Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur, in present-day Bangladesh, where seals bearing his name were recovered.
• Odantapuri, another Pala foundation in Bihar, is traditionally credited to Gopala.
• Nalanda's early growth is associated with Gupta patronage, notably Kumaragupta I; later rulers, the Palas among them, continued to endow it.
• Atisha Dipankara Srijnana, an abbot of Vikramashila, travelled to Tibet in the eleventh century and reshaped monastic Buddhism there.
• Dharmapala contested the tripartite struggle for Kanauj with the Gurjara-Pratiharas and the Rashtrakutas, and installed Chakrayudha at Kanauj.
• The destruction of Vikramashila is generally attributed to Bakhtiyar Khalji's campaigns in eastern India around 1193.

• The stem asks who established the institution, so the answer needs land and revenue to grant; two of the four names are philosophers, so the list reads as a scholars' list unless the verb "established" is held in view.
• Kumarila Bhatta argued for Vedic ritualism against Buddhist opponents, so crediting him with a Buddhist mahavihara reverses the position he is known for.
• "Madhavacharya" can be read as two different medieval figures, and trying to settle which one is meant wastes the shortcut that the chronology already gives.
• Vikramashila is Dharmapala's, and the Paharpur seals name him at Somapura too, so a ruler can hold more than one foundation; expecting one centre per king weakens an otherwise sound elimination.
• Matching a famous king to a famous monastery without checking region and century leaves Pulakeshin II, a seventh-century Deccan ruler, looking plausible against a ninth-century Bihar site.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The excavated remains of the Vikramashila Mahavihara lie in which present-day district of Bihar?

  • (a)Bhagalpur
  • (b)Nalanda
  • (c)Gaya
  • (d)Vaishali
  Answera — Bhagalpur. The site at Antichak, close to the Ganga in Bhagalpur district, is identified with Vikramashila.

  (b) fails because Nalanda district holds the ruins of the Nalanda Mahavihara, a foundation whose early growth came under Gupta patronage.

  (c) fails because Gaya district holds Bodh Gaya, the place of the Buddha's enlightenment, not a Pala monastic university.

  (d) fails because Vaishali is associated with the Licchavis and with the second Buddhist council.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Clay seals excavated at Paharpur name which Pala ruler in connection with the Somapura Mahavihara?

  • (a)Gopala
  • (b)Dharmapala
  • (c)Devapala
  • (d)Shashanka
  Answerb — Dharmapala. The clay seals recovered from the Paharpur site name Dharmapaladeva in their legend, tying his name to the Somapura Mahavihara.

  (a) fails because Gopala founded the Pala line and is traditionally credited with Odantapuri instead.

  (c) fails because Devapala is credited with the monastery in the Tibetan tradition (Taranatha), but the excavated seals name Dharmapala, which is what this question asks for.

  (d) fails because Shashanka ruled Gauda in the seventh century, before the Palas, and is remembered as a rival of Harshavardhana.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which scholar is associated with Vikramashila and with carrying Buddhism to Tibet in the eleventh century?

  • (a)Shantarakshita
  • (b)Padmasambhava
  • (c)Atisha Dipankara Srijnana
  • (d)Buddhaghosha
  Answerc — Atisha Dipankara Srijnana. He served at Vikramashila and went to Tibet in the eleventh century, where his teaching reshaped monastic Buddhism.

  (a) and (b) fail on the century the question fixes: Shantarakshita and Padmasambhava both reached Tibet in the eighth century, in the reign of Trisong Detsen.

  (d) fails because Buddhaghosha was a Theravada commentator who worked on the Pali canon in Sri Lanka, several centuries earlier and in a different tradition.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kumarila Bhatta, whose works include the Shlokavarttika, is associated with which school of Indian philosophy?

  • (a)Purva Mimamsa
  • (b)Dvaita Vedanta
  • (c)Samkhya
  • (d)Nyaya
  Answera — Purva Mimamsa. Kumarila Bhatta defended the authority of the Vedas and the efficacy of ritual action, and the Shlokavarttika belongs to the Mimamsa commentarial tradition.

  (b) fails because Dvaita Vedanta was propounded by Madhvacharya, centuries later.

  (c) fails because Samkhya is the system built on purusha and prakriti, traced to Kapila.

  (d) fails because Nyaya is the school of logic and epistemology traced to Gautama's Nyaya Sutras.