UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 91 of 150

Correct — B, A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2. The four names in List – II are anglicised spellings of four Sanskrit music theorists, and the pairing runs: Ragamala was written by Pundarika Vitthala (later sixteenth century); Rasakaumudi by Srikantha (about 1575); Ragavibodha by Somanatha (1609-10); and the Chaturdandi Prakashika by Venkatamakhin, the 'Venkatraman' of the option list, in the mid-seventeenth century at the Nayaka court of Thanjavur. The fastest route to the answer is the one pair almost every candidate knows: the Chaturdandi Prakashika is Venkatamakhin's, and it is the text that sets out the seventy-two melakarta scheme still used to classify Carnatic ragas. Fixing D-2 alone disposes of the whole question, because (a) offers D-1, (c) offers D-4 and (d) offers D-3 — only (b) carries D-2. A second anchor confirms it: Ragavibodha is Somanatha's, so C-1, which again appears only in (b) and (d). UPPSC had already asked this exact match, with the same four texts and the same four writers, as Question 143 of its 2021 Paper-I; there the same pairing sat at option (a). Note the spellings in this paper are non-standard — 'Ragvivodh' for Ragavibodha, 'Pundrik Vitthal' for Pundarika Vitthala — and should not be read as different works.

• (a)A-2, B-4, C-3, D-1 — Only B-4 survives here. A-2 hands Ragamala to Venkatamakhin, who wrote the Chaturdandi Prakashika; C-3 hands Ragavibodha to Pundarika Vitthala, when Ragavibodha is Somanatha's; and D-1 hands the Chaturdandi Prakashika to Somanatha. This is the trap for a candidate who remembers the four names but not which text goes with which.
• (c)A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 — The serial-order decoy — 1, 2, 3, 4 straight down the list, which examiners include precisely because a guessing candidate reaches for it. Not one of the four pairs is right: Ragamala is Pundarika Vitthala's, not Somanatha's; Rasakaumudi is Srikantha's, not Venkatamakhin's; Ragavibodha is Somanatha's, not Pundarika Vitthala's; and the Chaturdandi Prakashika is Venkatamakhin's, not Srikantha's.
• (d)A-4, B-2, C-1, D-3 — This option does get C-1 right — Ragavibodha is indeed Somanatha's — which is what makes it tempting, but the other three pairs are swapped. Ragamala belongs to Pundarika Vitthala, not Srikantha; Rasakaumudi to Srikantha, not Venkatamakhin; and the Chaturdandi Prakashika to Venkatamakhin, not Pundarika Vitthala. The single check on D settles it.

Indian classical music has a continuous Sanskrit theoretical literature, and UPPSC tests it as text-to-author recall. The medieval and early-modern layer of that literature is concerned above all with classifying ragas — grouping scales into parent and derived families so that a performing tradition can be taught and written down. Pundarika Vitthala, a musician from the Kannada country who worked at northern courts in the later sixteenth century, wrote Ragamala along with Ragamanjari, Sadragachandrodaya and Nartananirnaya. Srikantha's Rasakaumudi, of about 1575, covers both music and dance. Somanatha's Ragavibodha of 1609-10 is remembered for its systematic notation of ragas. Venkatamakhin's Chaturdandi Prakashika, written under Vijayaraghava Nayaka of Thanjavur, produced the seventy-two melakarta framework that still organises Carnatic music.

In a four-by-four match you almost never need all four pairs. Identify the one you are surest of, then read down the code column for that letter and delete every option that disagrees. Here the sure pair is D — the Chaturdandi Prakashika is the melakarta text and belongs to Venkatamakhin — and D-2 appears in exactly one option. Two cautions specific to this question. First, do not confuse this Ragamala, a raga-classification treatise, with the ragamala painting genre in which each raga is depicted as a personified miniature; they share a name and nothing else. Second, the spellings are the paper's own: 'Venkatraman' here is Venkatamakhin (also written Venkatesvara Dikshita), not a modern figure of the same name. On sourcing, the Venkatamakhin attribution is fully documented; the other three are standard and uncontested in musicology bibliographies but rest on catalogue and edition evidence rather than a single primary reference, so treat them as settled convention rather than something to argue from first principles.

• Chaturdandi Prakashika — Venkatamakhin (Venkatesvara Dikshita), mid-seventeenth century, written at Thanjavur under the Nayaka ruler Vijayaraghava; it is the basis of the seventy-two melakarta classification of Carnatic ragas.
• Ragavibodha — Somanatha, 1609-10, notable for setting out a notation for ragas.
• Ragamala — Pundarika Vitthala, later sixteenth century; he also wrote Ragamanjari, Sadragachandrodaya and Nartananirnaya, and worked at north Indian courts.
• Rasakaumudi — Srikantha, about 1575, a treatise covering both music and dance.
• UPPSC repeated this item: the identical four texts and four writers appeared as Question 143 of UPPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I, where the same pairing A-3, B-4, C-1, D-2 was keyed as option (a).

• Confusing the Ragamala treatise with ragamala miniature paintings; the shared name is the whole of the connection
• Reading 'Venkatraman' as anyone other than Venkatamakhin, the author of the Chaturdandi Prakashika
• Choosing the serial code A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 when unsure — option (c) here, and wrong in every pair

UPPSC asks Indian music as a straight text-to-author or artist-to-form match, often repeating the same list across years, while UPSC prefers the concept or the contribution — who devised the raga classification scheme, which form Amir Khusrau is credited with, what defines a particular gharana or dance style.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The seventy-two 'melakarta' scheme for classifying ragas in Carnatic music was set out in which of the following texts?

  • (a)Sangita Ratnakara
  • (b)Chaturdandi Prakashika
  • (c)Brihaddeshi
  • (d)Ragavibodha

  Answer(b) Chaturdandi Prakashika — Venkatamakhin's mid-seventeenth-century treatise, written at Thanjavur; the Sangita Ratnakara is Sarangadeva's, the Brihaddeshi is Matanga's and the Ragavibodha is Somanatha's.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The term 'Ragamala' is used in Indian cultural history for both

  • (a)a school of temple sculpture and a system of temple accounting
  • (b)a treatise on the classification of ragas and a genre of miniature painting depicting ragas as personified figures
  • (c)a percussion instrument and a dance form of the Deccan
  • (d)a Mughal revenue register and a Rajput court chronicle

  Answer(b) a treatise on the classification of ragas and a genre of miniature painting depicting ragas as personified figures — the treatise in this question is Pundarika Vitthala's; the painting genre is a separate visual tradition that shares only the name.