Consider the following statements and select the correct statement(s): 1. Somchand appointed four fort guards – Karki, Bora, Taragi and Chaudhary. 2. All the above were jointly called ‘CHAR Aal’.
- (a)Only 1
- (b)Only 2
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Correct — C, Both 1 and 2.
Statement 1 names the four men Somchand put on fort duty in his new Kumaon seat: Karki, Bora, Taragi and Chaudhary. Statement 2 gives the collective name those same four carry, 'CHAR Aal'. The key accepts both halves, so Both 1 and 2 stands.
Statement 2 is a separate claim — the collective term — and must be checked on its own. A term can be wrong while the roster it names is right, so the naming half earns its own verdict; the provisional key accepts it, so both stand.
The idea to carry away is that the Chand founder held his territory by drawing named local lineages into office. That is why these surnames keep reappearing in Kumaon's later administration as office-holding clans rather than as private family names.
- (a)Only 1 — This keeps the roster and throws out the label. Rejecting the label needs a positive ground — a different collective term, or one covering a different set of clans — and on this stem the provisional key marks statement 2 correct.
(a) is the right answer to a pair whose second statement misnames the group or hands the arrangement to a different Chand ruler — there the four names would stand on their own.
- (b)Only 2 — This accepts the collective name while rejecting the list of four. The dependence runs one way here: statement 2 says 'All the above', so it takes its subject from statement 1's roster. Break that roster and the label is left describing the wrong set.
(b) is the right answer to a pair whose second statement names the clans itself — say 'Karki, Bora, Taragi and Chaudhary were jointly called CHAR Aal' — set beside a first statement that carries a wrong surname or the wrong ruler.
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Choosing (d) treats an unfamiliar term as an invented one. Unfamiliarity is not evidence against a fact, and both halves are accepted here, so this mark trades a full score for a hunch.
(d) is the right answer to a pair that credits the arrangement to the Katyuris or to the Panwar line of Garhwal instead of the Chand founder — the appointment and the label would both then be misplaced.
A ruler establishing himself in hill country has to get the forts held and the revenue collected before he can do anything else. One common instrument is a bargain with local lineages: named clans are given office and duty, and the ruler gets his strongholds manned.
That is how a surname turns into an administrative unit. In Kumaon the clan name and the office ran together, so an item on early Chand administration is really an item on which families were drawn into the new state.
The arrangement in this stem sits at the very start of Chand rule in Kumaon, when the seat was Champawat — the tract also called Kali Kumaon — long before the capital was moved to Almora in 1563.
The same four clan names — Bora, Karki, Taragi and Chaudhary, the last also written Chaudhari — recur as the four Burhas of Kali Kumaon, nobles who carried administrative and military duties and collected revenue over wide areas.
For a Uttarakhand paper this belongs with the state's own political history rather than with general Indian history, because both the names and the terms are local ones.
- Som Chand founded the Chand kingdom of Kumaon with its seat at Champawat, the tract also known as Kali Kumaon.
- The four fort guards in this stem are Karki, Bora, Taragi and Chaudhary, and the key accepts 'CHAR Aal' as their collective name.
- The same four clan names — Bora, Karki, Taragi and Chaudhary (Chaudhari) — are recorded in Kali Kumaon as the four Burhas.
- Those Burhas carried administrative and military functions and managed revenue collection across wide areas.
- The Chand capital shifted from Champawat to Almora in 1563.
- Chand rule in Kumaon ended when the Kingdom of Nepal's forces overran the hills; Mahendra Chand was the last ruler of the line.
The roster and the collective term are judged separately, and the provisional key accepts each of them.
- Deciding the second statement from the first; the collective term is its own claim and needs its own check, even when the roster is right.
- Reading 'fort guards' as an anonymous garrison instead of four named clans brought into office.
- Letting a substituted surname slip past — the statement turns on all four names, so read the list to its end before deciding.
- Placing the arrangement at Almora, the later Chand seat, when it belongs to the first seat at Champawat.
- Marking 'Neither' because a Kumaoni term is unfamiliar, which converts a gap in reading into a confident negative.
The idea shows up as a two-statement true/false like this one, where one statement carries the roster of names and the other carries the collective term.
It could also be set as a plain one-liner — who appointed the four fort guards, or which clans they were — or as a match-the-pairs joining a clan name to an office, or a ruler to an administrative measure.
A harder version shifts the setting rather than the fact: the same four names attached to a later Chand ruler, or the same measure placed at Almora instead of Champawat.
UPPSC_2024_PRE_GSI_Q202024The same device on a closely parallel claim: a two-statement item in which one statement says a ruler created a new class of officers — Ashoka's Dhamma-mahamatras there, Somchand's four fort guards here — and the candidate has to accept or reject each half. What differs is scale and setting. The UPPSC item is Mauryan imperial administration across a subcontinental empire and pairs the officer claim with a textual-source claim about Dhamma; this one is regional Kumaoni history turning on a single hill seat, and its second statement supplies a collective name rather than a source.
UPSC_2017_GS1_Q392017Same two-statement form with the same four options, and both items ask you to read an appointment claim exactly as written rather than approximately. What differs is the domain and the kind of claim: QCI is a contemporary national body and the second statement there concerns the procedure by which its chairman is appointed, whereas here the second statement gives a collective name for men already appointed. One second statement is about procedure, the other about terminology.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Somchand, founder of the Chand dynasty, established his seat at which place?
- (a)Almora
- (b)Champawat
- (c)Baijnath
- (d)Srinagar
Answerb — Champawat, the tract also known as Kali Kumaon, was the first Chand seat.Almora fails because it became the Chand capital only in 1563, generations after the founding. Baijnath is associated with the Katyuris who preceded the Chands. Srinagar on the Alaknanda was the Garhwal capital, a separate kingdom to the west.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The appointment of the four fort guards Karki, Bora, Taragi and Chaudhary is credited to which ruler?
- (a)Baz Bahadur Chand
- (b)Kalyan Chand
- (c)Som Chand
- (d)Mahendra Chand
Answerc — the appointment belongs to Som Chand, the founder, and was part of securing his new seat in Kali Kumaon.Baz Bahadur Chand and Kalyan Chand belong to later generations of the same dynasty, well after the seat was established. Mahendra Chand stands at the other end of the line, as its last ruler. None of the three is the founder who set the arrangement up.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Chand capital was moved from Champawat to Almora in which year?
- (a)1463
- (b)1563
- (c)1663
- (d)1763
Answerb — 1563 is the year the Chand seat shifted from Champawat to Almora.1463 is a century too early; Champawat was still the seat through the fifteenth century. 1663 and 1763 both fall after the move, by which time Almora was long established as the capital, and 1763 falls in the late Chand period, well after the move.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Chand rule in Kumaon was brought to an end by the invasion of which power?
- (a)The Kingdom of Nepal (Gorkhas)
- (b)The Rohillas
- (c)The English East India Company
- (d)The Panwars of Garhwal
Answera — Nepal's forces overran Kumaon and Mahendra Chand, the last of the Chand line, was driven from his kingdom.The East India Company fails because it took Kumaon from the Gorkhas afterwards, in the Anglo-Nepalese war, not from the Chands. The Rohillas raided Kumaon earlier in the eighteenth century but the dynasty continued after they withdrew.
The Panwars of Garhwal did seize the Kumaon throne once — Lalit Shah installed his son as Pradyuman Chand, 1779–1786 — but Chand rulers returned (Mohan Chand again, then Shiv Chand and Mahendra Chand), so the Panwars did not end the line; the Gorkhas did, in 1790.