Arrange the following saints in correct chronological order and select the correct answer from the code given below. 1. Nanak 2. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu 3. Namdev 4. Kabir
- (a)3, 4, 2, 1
- (b)3, 4, 1, 2
- (c)4, 3, 1, 2
- (d)4, 3, 2, 1
Correct — B, 3, 4, 1, 2, that is Namdev → Kabir → Nanak → Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Namdev is the oldest of the four by a wide margin: the Marathi Varkari saint of Pandharpur is traditionally dated c. 1270-1350 (scholars who dispute those dates propose 1207-1287 or 1309-1372 — every one of them is 13th-14th century). Kabir comes next, in the 15th century; his exact years are genuinely uncertain, with historians divided between c. 1398-1448 and c. 1440-1518, but either bracket puts him before the two saints who follow. Guru Nanak was born on 15 April 1469 and died on 22 September 1539. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born on 18 February 1486 and died on 14 June 1534. Nanak is therefore the elder of that near-contemporary pair by seventeen years, which is exactly what separates option (b) from option (a).
- (a)3, 4, 2, 1 — This gets the first half right — Namdev then Kabir — and then reverses the last two. It places Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (born 1486) before Guru Nanak (born 1469), when Nanak was the elder by seventeen years and had already begun his udasis (travels) while Chaitanya was a boy in Navadvipa. This is the option the question is built to catch: (a) and (b) are identical except for that final swap.
- (c)4, 3, 1, 2 — It opens with Kabir before Namdev. Namdev belongs to the 13th-14th century Varkari tradition of Maharashtra; Kabir belongs to 15th-century Varanasi. Even on the earliest date any historian gives Kabir (1398), Namdev had been dead roughly fifty years. The candidate who marks this is usually thinking of the two men as fellow north-Indian nirguna poets because both appear in the Guru Granth Sahib — but sharing a scripture does not make them contemporaries.
- (d)4, 3, 2, 1 — It carries both mistakes at once — Kabir placed before Namdev, and Chaitanya placed before Nanak. It is in fact the exact reverse of the correct sequence, which is a common shape for the 'safety' distractor in UPPSC's chronology codes.
The Bhakti movement is not one wave but a long relay: it begins with the Alvars and Nayanars of the Tamil country, is given philosophical shape by Shankaracharya and then Ramanuja, and reaches northern and western India between the 13th and 16th centuries. The four saints in this question mark that later stretch. Namdev is a Varkari of Maharashtra, devoted to Vithoba of Pandharpur. Kabir is the sharpest voice of the nirguna (formless-God) stream in the Ganga valley, hostile to ritual and to caste in both Hinduism and Islam. Guru Nanak founded Sikhism and became the first of its ten Gurus. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism in Bengal and made congregational singing of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra the centre of worship.
Two of the four options — (a) and (b) — open with the same pair '3, 4', so the whole question collapses to one decision: Nanak or Chaitanya first? Fix the two birth years and you are done: Nanak 1469, Chaitanya 1486. The reason candidates hesitate is that Chaitanya belongs to an older-feeling Vaishnava devotional world while Nanak founded a religion that feels 'modern', so intuition pushes Chaitanya earlier. Intuition is wrong. The second decision, Namdev before Kabir, is safe once you remember that Namdev is a Marathi saint of the Yadava-to-early-Sultanate period, not a north-Indian contemporary of Kabir.
- Namdev: traditionally c. 1270-1350, a Marathi Varkari saint born at Narsi Bamani; recorded as of the shimpi (tailor) or calico-printer caste; the Adi Granth compiles 61 songs attributed to him
- Kabir: born in Varanasi and died at Maghar, both in present-day Uttar Pradesh; his dates are openly uncertain, with historians split between c. 1398-1448 and c. 1440-1518; his verses are in the Guru Granth Sahib
- Guru Nanak: 15 April 1469, Rai Bhoi Di Talvandi (today Nankana Sahib, Pakistan) - 22 September 1539 at Kartarpur; founder of Sikhism and first of the ten Gurus, with 974 hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib
- Chaitanya Mahaprabhu: 18 February 1486 - 14 June 1534, born at Navadvipa in Nadia, Bengal; founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism and popularised the chanting of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra
- Namdev, Kabir and Nanak are linked by a single text — compositions of all three sit in the Sikh scripture — which is why students wrongly bunch them into one generation
- c. 1270-1350 — Namdev (item 3), Varkari saint of Pandharpur, Maharashtra
- 15th century — Kabir (item 4) of Varanasi; dates disputed, either c. 1398-1448 or c. 1440-1518
- 1469-1539 — Guru Nanak (item 1), founder of Sikhism, born 15 April 1469
- 1486-1534 — Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (item 2), founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, born 18 February 1486
Answer (b): 3, 4, 1, 2. Nanak and Chaitanya overlap for half a century, but Nanak was born seventeen years earlier — that single fact decides the question.
- Assuming Chaitanya came before Nanak because Vaishnava devotion feels older than Sikhism — the birth years are 1486 and 1469
- Printing Kabir's dates as a settled '1398-1518'; the years are disputed, and the safe statement is simply '15th century, before Nanak'
- Grouping Namdev with Kabir and Ravidas as fellow north-Indian saints because all three appear in the Guru Granth Sahib — Namdev is Marathi and roughly a century and a half older
UPPSC asks the raw sequence and hands you a code to pick; UPSC prefers to anchor a saint against a political event or another saint — 'who was preaching when the Lodi dynasty fell', or a straight Shankaracharya-Ramanuja-Chaitanya ordering.
Which one of the following sequences indicates the correct chronological order?
- (a) Shankaracharya - Ramanuja - Chaitanya
- (b) Ramanuja - Shankaracharya - Chaitanya
- (c) Ramanuja - Chaitanya - Shankaracharya
- (d) Shankaracharya - Chaitanya - Ramanuja
Answer(a) Shankaracharya - Ramanuja - Chaitanya
The same task on an overlapping cast — order the great acharyas and saints by date. Chaitanya is the last name in that question and the last name in this one, so the two together fix the late-15th-century end of the Bhakti chronology.
Consider the following Bhakti Saints : 1. Dadu Dayal 2. Guru Nanak 3. Tyagaraja Who among the above was/were preaching when the Lodi dynasty fell and Babur took over?
- (a) 1 and 3
- (b) 2 only
- (c) 2 and 3
- (d) 1 and 2
Answer(b) 2 only
Bhakti-saint dating again, but pinned to a political event instead of to each other. It turns on Guru Nanak's 1469-1539 lifespan straddling Babur's 1526 conquest — the very date this UPPSC question needs you to hold.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following Bhakti saints was a near-contemporary of Guru Nanak?
- (a)Adi Shankaracharya
- (b)Ramanuja
- (c)Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
- (d)Namdev
Answer(c) Chaitanya Mahaprabhu — born 1486 against Nanak's 1469, the two lived through the same decades; Shankaracharya, Ramanuja and Namdev are all much earlier.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Maghar, associated with the death of Sant Kabir, is located in which present-day State?
- (a)Bihar
- (b)Uttar Pradesh
- (c)Madhya Pradesh
- (d)Rajasthan
Answer(b) Uttar Pradesh — Kabir was born in Varanasi and died at Maghar, both in present-day Uttar Pradesh.