(a) Illustrate the main features of Vesara style temple architecture. (b) Evaluate Firuz Shah Tughluq's economic policies. (c)…

(a) Main features of Vesara style temple architecture

The silpa texts name three modes of temple building: Nagara, Dravida and Vesara. Vesara is the hybrid Deccan mode. It combines the Nagara (northern) and Dravida (southern) idioms. It was anticipated in the experiments of the Badami Chalukyas at Aihole and Pattadakal and matured under the Later Chalukyas of Kalyani and the Hoysalas (11th–13th centuries).

Main features

• Plan: the sanctum is often stellate (star-shaped), with many projecting angles. The Doddabasappa temple at Dambal is an example.
• Superstructure: the vimana keeps Dravida tiers (talas), but these are lowered and compressed. Miniature shrine motifs are aligned vertically, so the tower rises in a steeper, more curvilinear, almost Nagara-like profile.
• Sukanasa: a projecting frontal buttress over the antarala, which carries the dynastic emblem.
• Plinth and hall: a raised, star-shaped jagati (platform) serves as a circumambulatory path. A pillared navaranga or mandapa has lathe-turned polished pillars.
• Material and ornament: fine-grained chloritic schist (soapstone) allowed dense, jewel-like carving.

Examples: Kasivisvesvara temple at Lakkundi, Mahadeva temple at Itagi, Chennakesava at Belur, Hoysalesvara at Halebidu, and Kesava at Somanathapura. (The mode is also called Karnata-Dravida; the stellate Nagara variant, Bhumija, should not be confused with it.)

(b) Evaluate Firuz Shah Tughluq's economic policies

Firuz Shah Tughluq (1351–88), whose reign is described in Afif's Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi and his own Futuhat, came to the throne after Muhammad bin Tughluq's disastrous experiments. He sought stability through concession and Sharia-based policy.

Measures

• Taxation: he abolished about two dozen non-canonical cesses (abwab). He levied only the four Islamic taxes: kharaj, jizya (now extended to Brahmins), khams and zakat.
• Revenue: a survey by Khwaja Hisamuddin Junaid fixed the revenue demand (jama) of the Sultanate at a standard figure (Afif gives 6 crore 75 lakh tankas). He also wrote off the taqavi loans of the previous reign.
• Irrigation and agriculture: canals from the Yamuna and the Sutlej fed the Hisar tract, and a water cess (haqq-i-sharb) was charged on land they irrigated.
• Towns and crafts: he founded Firozabad, Hisar-Firoza, Fatehabad and Jaunpur. He expanded the royal karkhanas and kept a huge slave establishment (Diwan-i-Bandagan, whose numbers Afif puts in the lakhs).
• Welfare and recovery: the Diwan-i-Khairat (charity), a hospital (Dar-ul-Shifa), an employment bureau, and the Diwan-i-Mustakhraj for recovering arrears and illegal exactions.

Evaluation. Afif describes cheap prices and a contented peasantry, and the canals extended cultivation. However, making iqtas and offices hereditary, paying salaries through transferable revenue drafts (wajh), and maintaining the costly slave corps weakened central control and royal finances. The prosperity was real but short-lived, and the policies helped prepare the Sultanate's disintegration after 1388.

(c) Evaluate the contribution of Qalandariyyah to medieval Indian culture

The Qalandariyya were wandering, antinomian dervishes (be-shara Sufis) who emerged in the Persian and Central Asian world in the 13th century. They rejected settled khanqah life, property and social conventions. Many shaved the head, beard, moustache and eyebrows, wore iron rings, and lived on alms.

Indian presence: Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan in Sindh and Bu Ali Qalandar (Shaikh Sharafuddin) at Panipat became the most revered figures. Their practice centred on loud dhikr with music and dance (raqs) and on muraqaba (meditation) rather than the silent dhikr of the Naqshbandis; the Chishti attitude was sympathetic — the circle of Nizamuddin Auliya respected the qalandars’ renunciation — while jurists condemned them.

Contribution

• Popular religiosity: their ecstatic devotion reached artisans, peasants and the poor, beyond the courtly and learned circles of the ulama. Their shrines became centres of mass pilgrimage.
• Syncretism: their itinerant, ascetic lifestyle closely resembled that of the Nath jogis and sannyasis. This fostered exchange of practices and a shared idiom of renunciation in north India.
• Literature and music: Bu Ali Qalandar's Persian verse, and the musical, trance-based devotion of these groups, enriched the ecstatic, musical side of popular Sufi devotion.
• Dissent: by mocking wealth and formal piety, they voiced a counter-culture against both orthodoxy and power.

Limits: their disregard of the sharia drew condemnation even from sympathetic Sufis. They left no stable organisation or literature comparable to the Chishtis and Suhrawardis. Their contribution therefore lay chiefly in popular, syncretic religious culture rather than in institutions.

(d) Main features of Malwa school of painting with examples

The Malwa school flourished in Central India (Mandu, Narsinghgarh, Sarangpur and nearby centres) from about 1600 to 1700. Its roots lie in two earlier traditions: the pre-Mughal "Chaurapanchasika" idiom of western India, and the Persianate painting of the Malwa Sultanate, seen in the Nimatnama illustrated for the Khalji sultans at Mandu around 1500.

Main features

• Conservatism: compared with Rajasthani schools it absorbed little Mughal naturalism. It kept flat, two-dimensional space divided into registers and compartments.
• Colour: bold, contrasting fields of red, chocolate brown, black and yellow, with backgrounds of a single colour and little shading.
• Line and figures: firm, rhythmic outlines. Figures are stylised, in profile, with large eyes, and women wear transparent odhnis.
• Conventions: architecture is shown as open pavilions framing the figures, trees are stylised in rows, water has basket-weave patterns.
• Themes: poetic and devotional, including Krishna-lila, nayika-bheda and musical modes.

Examples: the Rasikapriya series (c. 1634), the Amaru Shataka (1652), and the Ragamala painted at Narsinghgarh (1680).

Malwa painting thus preserved and refined the indigenous tradition. It represents the conservative, Central Indian branch of Rajasthani painting.

(e) Features of Portuguese colonial enterprise

Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498 and opened the Cape route. After that the Portuguese built the first European maritime empire in Asia, the Estado da India.

Features

• Royal, state-directed enterprise: trade in pepper and spices was a Crown monopoly, run through the Casa da India and the royal fleets of the Carreira da India, not by a joint-stock company. A viceroy or governor at Goa headed the Estado.
• Sea power and fortified bases: Francisco de Almeida (first viceroy, 1505) relied on control of the sea (the "blue water" policy). The Portuguese defeated the Gujarat–Mamluk fleet at Diu in 1509. Afonso de Albuquerque then seized Goa (1510), Malacca (1511) and Hormuz (1515), which produced a chain of coastal forts from Mozambique to the Moluccas.
• Cartaz system: Asian ships had to buy passes and pay customs at Portuguese ports.
• Religious zeal: under the Padroado (royal patronage of the Church), missionaries such as Francis Xavier were sent out, forced conversions took place, and the Goa Inquisition was set up in 1560.
• Social policy: Albuquerque encouraged mixed marriages (casados) to create a settled population.
• Cultural transfers: the printing press at Goa (1556), new crops such as chillies, tobacco and maize.

Limits: a small home population, corruption and religious intolerance, followed by Dutch and English competition, confined them to Goa, Daman and Diu; Bombay was transferred to the English in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry. They pioneered the European armed-trading model later perfected by the companies.