UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 44 of 150

Correct — D, A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1: Devana Bhatta – Smriti Chandrika, Hemadri – Chaturvarga Chintamani, Madhvacharya – Parashar Madhav, Ballal Sen – Dan Sagar. All four are nibandhas, the great medieval digests of dharmashastra: works that collected the scattered rulings of the smritis on gifts, vows, inheritance, penance and ritual and tried to reconcile them into usable law. Devanna Bhatta, a southern jurist writing at some point between about AD 1150 and 1225, compiled the Smriti Chandrika, 'the moonlight of the smritis' — a digest that became one of the leading authorities on Hindu law in the Deccan and the south, so A goes to 4. Hemadri, remembered in Maharashtra as Hemadpant, was the prime minister of the Seuna or Yadava kingdom of Devagiri from 1259 to 1274, serving Mahadeva and later Ramachandra; his Chaturvarga Chintamani, composed around AD 1260–1270, is an encyclopaedic treatise on dharma running to thousands of vratas with the manner of performing each, so B goes to 3. Madhavacharya — the scholar also known as Vidyaranya, who lived roughly 1296 to 1391 and became jagadguru of the Sringeri matha — wrote the Parashara Madhaviya, a commentary on the Parashara Smriti, so C goes to 2. And Ballala Sena, the Sena ruler of Bengal in the second half of the twelfth century, was himself an author: he composed the Dana Sagara, 'the ocean of gifts', in 1168 and began the Adbhuta Sagara in 1169, which his son Lakshmana Sena completed. So D goes to 1. There is a one-step route through this question worth learning as a technique. Ballal Sen is the only name in List-I that most candidates can attach to a treatise with certainty, because he is a king and 'the king who wrote the Dana Sagara' is a memorable fact; and D-1 appears in exactly one of the four codes. Fix that single pair and option (d) is the answer without checking anything else. One caution the paper itself invites: List-I spells the third name 'Madhvacharya', which is also the name of the thirteenth-century Dvaita philosopher of Udupi. The Parashara Madhaviya is not his — it belongs to Madhavacharya/Vidyaranya of Sringeri, a different man of a later century. The key pairs C with 2 on the strength of the treatise, which is the right reading; carry the distinction so a differently worded question cannot catch you.

• (a)A-2, B-4, C-1, D-3 — Every pair is wrong. It makes Devana Bhatta the author of the Parashara Madhaviya, Hemadri the author of the Smriti Chandrika, Madhvacharya the author of the Dana Sagara and Ballal Sen the author of the Chaturvarga Chintamani. The last of these is the easiest to reject: the Chaturvarga Chintamani is Hemadri's encyclopaedic dharma digest, written in the Yadava court of the Deccan, and could not be the work of a Sena king of Bengal a century earlier.
• (b)A-1, B-4, C-2, D-3 — Only the Madhvacharya–Parashar Madhav pair is right; the other three are shuffled. It hands the Dana Sagara to Devana Bhatta and the Chaturvarga Chintamani to Ballal Sen, when in fact the Dana Sagara is the treatise Ballala Sena wrote in 1168 and the Chaturvarga Chintamani is Hemadri's. It also gives the Smriti Chandrika to Hemadri, whose digest is the Chaturvarga Chintamani.
• (c)A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4 — All four pairs are wrong. It gives the Chaturvarga Chintamani to Devana Bhatta, the Parashara Madhaviya to Hemadri, the Dana Sagara to Madhvacharya and the Smriti Chandrika to Ballal Sen. The Smriti Chandrika is the work of Devanna Bhatta, a southern jurist, and became an authority on Hindu law in the Deccan and the south; it is not a Bengal text and has no connection with the Sena court.

From roughly the eleventh century onwards, Hindu law was written less through new smritis than through commentaries and digests. A commentary (tika or bhashya) explains one text — Vijnaneshvara's Mitakshara on the Yajnavalkya Smriti, Madhavacharya's Parashara Madhaviya on the Parashara Smriti. A digest (nibandha) instead gathers rulings from many smritis on a chosen subject and tries to reconcile them — Devanna Bhatta's Smriti Chandrika, Hemadri's Chaturvarga Chintamani, Ballala Sena's Dana Sagara, Jimutavahana's Dayabhaga. These works are what Indian courts actually applied for centuries, which is why the two great schools of Hindu inheritance law are named after texts of this kind, Mitakshara and Dayabhaga, and why UPSC once asked plainly who the famous jurists of medieval India were.

This is a four-pair match with no fully correct partial option to fall back on, so the efficient move is to find the one pair you are certain of and eliminate. Ballal Sen is that pair: he is a ruler, not a professional jurist, and the striking fact about him is precisely that a king wrote a legal digest. Danam means gift or charitable giving and the Dana Sagara is his 'ocean of gifts' — the name almost matches itself. Only option (d) contains D-1. The other useful anchors are semantic. Chaturvarga means the four aims of life, dharma, artha, kama and moksha, and chintamani is a wish-granting jewel: an encyclopaedic sweep, which suits Hemadri, the chief minister of a large kingdom writing an exhaustive manual of vratas. Parashar Madhav simply carries both names, the smriti commented on and the commentator. Smriti Chandrika, moonlight on the smritis, is left for Devana Bhatta.

• Devanna Bhatta composed the Smriti Chandrika around AD 1150–1225 in South India; it is a nibandha, a digest reconciling the smritis, and became a leading authority on Hindu law in the Deccan and the south.
• Hemadri, known as Hemadpant, was prime minister of the Seuna (Yadava) dynasty of Devagiri from 1259 to 1274 under Mahadeva and Ramachandra; his Chaturvarga Chintamani, composed about AD 1260–1270, is an encyclopaedic dharma treatise containing thousands of vratas with the method of performing them. He is also credited with introducing the Modi script for Marathi and with the lime-free Hemadpanti style of temple building.
• The Parashara Madhaviya is a commentary on the Parashara Smriti by Madhavacharya, also known as Vidyaranya (c. 1296–1391), who became jagadguru of the Sringeri Sharada Peetham. He is a different person from Madhvacharya, the thirteenth-century founder of the Dvaita school at Udupi, though the paper's spelling blurs the two.
• Ballala Sena, the Sena ruler of Bengal in the second half of the twelfth century, wrote the Dana Sagara in 1168 and began the Adbhuta Sagara in 1169; the latter was completed by his son Lakshmana Sena. He is also associated with the introduction of Kulinism among Bengal's Brahmins and Kayasthas.
• The wider family of medieval legal literature includes Vijnaneshvara's Mitakshara (commentary on the Yajnavalkya Smriti, eleventh–twelfth century) and Jimutavahana's Dayabhaga (about AD 1100), which give their names to the two schools of Hindu inheritance law.

• Reading 'Madhvacharya' as the Dvaita philosopher of Udupi. The Parashara Madhaviya is by Madhavacharya (Vidyaranya) of Sringeri, roughly a century later. The two names differ by one syllable and are constantly confused.
• Forgetting that Ballal Sen is both a ruler and an author. Candidates who file him only under the Sena dynasty of Bengal miss the fastest route through this question.
• Mixing up the digests with the commentaries — Smriti Chandrika, Chaturvarga Chintamani and Dana Sagara are nibandhas that draw on many smritis, while Mitakshara and Parashara Madhaviya are commentaries on one named smriti each.

UPPSC asks this area as a match-list or a 'not correctly matched' pair of author and text, and mixes Sanskrit legal literature with Persian chronicles in the same paper; UPSC prefers to name a group of scholars and ask which of them were jurists, or to ask what a particular text permits or prescribes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Dana Sagara and the Adbhuta Sagara were composed by which ruler?

  • (a)Vijaya Sena
  • (b)Ballala Sena
  • (c)Lakshmana Sena
  • (d)Hemanta Sena

  Answer(b) Ballala Sena — the Sena king of Bengal wrote the Dana Sagara in 1168 and began the Adbhuta Sagara in 1169; the second work was left unfinished at his death and was completed by his son Lakshmana Sena.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Hemadri, the author of the Chaturvarga Chintamani, was a minister of which dynasty?

  • (a)The Kakatiyas of Warangal
  • (b)The Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra
  • (c)The Seunas (Yadavas) of Devagiri
  • (d)The Gahadavalas of Kannauj

  Answer(c) The Seunas (Yadavas) of Devagiri — Hemadri, or Hemadpant, served as prime minister from 1259 to 1274 under Mahadeva and later Ramachandra, and is also remembered for the Modi script and the lime-free Hemadpanti style of temple building.