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50 free Assam trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Assam is the India most visitors never reach: a valley carved by a river with a masculine name, a floodplain park where the one-horned rhino made its last stand, and tea gardens so vast they keep their own clock. Its Ahom kings held off the Mughals for six centuries, its temple on a Guwahati hill draws Tantric pilgrims every June, and its silks shimmer with a natural gold. These 50 questions move across that ground: the river and its islands, Kaziranga and the wildlife of Manas, the tea story from the first wild bush to the modern estate, the three Bihus, the Ahom kingdom from its founder to its fall, Kamakhya, Guwahati, the weaving towns, the state symbols and the singers, sprinters, writers and politicians who put Assam on the map. Most are pitched for a general pub table, with a handful for people who know the northeast well. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print the set for a classroom, a quiz night or a Bihu gathering.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tea gardens in parts of Assam keep 'bagan time', a local clock set how far from Indian Standard Time?
One hour ahead
One hour ahead of IST is 'Chaibagan' or 'Bagan' time, kept by tea gardens in parts of Assam where dawn comes long before it reaches western India. A 2014 proposal for a statewide clock an hour ahead was still unapproved as of May 2026.
Q 02Whose 1904 visit to Kaziranga led to its creation as a reserve forest the following year?
The Viceroy's wife
The Viceroy's wife, Mary Curzon, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston, toured the area in 1904; on 1 June 1905 the Kaziranga Proposed Reserve Forest was created over 232 km². The park marked its centenary in 2005.
Q 03Rongali Bihu, the Assamese New Year when village cattle are washed in rivers, falls in which month?
April
April brings Rongali or Bohag Bihu, the most important of Assam's three Bihus and the one that coincides with the Assamese New Year; Kongali Bihu follows in October or November and Bhogali Bihu in January.
Q 04Majuli is Guinness's largest river island, but Britannica picks Bananal Island in which country?
Brazil
Brazil's Bananal Island is the Encyclopædia Britannica's choice, while Guinness World Records credits Majuli, which erosion had shrunk to roughly 880 km² by 2024. Majuli has sat on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 2004.
Q 05Which golden wild silk of Assam, spun by larvae fed on som and sualu leaves, holds a GI tag?
Muga
Muga silk is prized for its natural yellowish-golden shimmer and extreme durability, and is one of three indigenous wild silks of Assam, woven into saris, mekhelas and chadors.
Q 06Assam's Ahom dynasty traced its founder to Möng Mao, a Tai principality whose core lay in which modern country?
China
China's Dehong prefecture in Yunnan, on the Ruili river, was Möng Mao's core; its founding Tai prince is said to have entered the Brahmaputra valley with about 9,000 followers in 1228, beginning a rule conventionally dated to end in 1826.
Q 07Which Assamese singer, a Columbia PhD and Paul Robeson's friend, got the Bharat Ratna in 2019?
Bhupen Hazarika
Bhupen Hazarika, honoured posthumously, wrote 'Bistirno Parore', which borrows the tune and imagery of Robeson's 'Ol' Man River'; born in Sadiya in 1926, he earned his Columbia doctorate in 1952 and took the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1992.
Q 08Which Assamese sprinter won India's first World U20 track gold, the 400 m at Tampere in 2018?
Hima Das
Hima Das, from a village near Dhing, clocked 51.46 s in Finland and weeks later set the Indian 400 m record of 50.79 s at the Asian Games; she received the Arjuna Award that same year.
Q 09Which 1826 agreement, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, handed Assam to the East India Company?
Treaty of Yandabo
The Treaty of Yandabo also ceded Manipur, Arakan and the Tenasserim coast and charged Burma an indemnity of one million pounds; it was signed without the consent of the Ahom kingdom it disposed of.
Q 10Which Ahom general won the 1671 naval battle of Saraighat near Guwahati, halting a Mughal invasion?
Lachit Borphukan
Lachit Borphukan's outnumbered force used delay, guerrilla raids and the Mughals' weak navy to win; Saraighat proved the last battle of the last major Mughal push into Assam.
Q 11Which June festival at Guwahati's Kamakhya temple celebrates the goddess's yearly menstruation?
Ambubachi Mela
Ambubachi Mela falls around mid-June, when the sun enters Mithuna and the Brahmaputra runs high; thousands of Tantric devotees gather at a shrine whose sanctum holds no image, only a yoni-shaped rock fissure fed by a spring.
Q 12Which temple islet at Guwahati is called the world's smallest inhabited river island?
Umananda
Umananda Island, also called Peacock Island, is reached by country boat from the Guwahati bank; the Kalika Purana places the nymph Urvashi's nectar-bearing pool here, and the Ahoms cleared a Mughal post from it before Saraighat.
Q 13Which Dima Hasao village is infamous for birds plunging from the sky on foggy monsoon-end nights?
Q 21Which Ahom royal pavilion, among Asia's oldest amphitheatres, let kings watch buffalo fights?
Rang Ghar
Rang Ghar, rebuilt in brick by Pramatta Singha in 1744–51, has a roof shaped like an inverted Ahom long boat and served as the logo of the 2007 National Games in Guwahati.
Q 22The 15 August 1950 Assam–Tibet earthquake, the largest ever recorded on land, had what magnitude?
8.7
8.7 is the moment magnitude assigned to the quake, which struck on Independence Day and was the largest ever caused by continental collision rather than subduction, with loud booms reported across the region.
Q 23Which last Ahom king, restored by the British in 1833 for a yearly tribute, was deposed in 1838?
Purandar Singha
Jatinga
Jatinga's so-called bird suicides are mostly juveniles, probably disoriented by fog and high winds, which villagers catch with bamboo poles between 6 and 9:30 pm in September and October.
Q 14Which bird, uplisted to Critically Endangered in 2024 and known locally as the deohanh, is Assam's state bird?
White-winged wood duck
The white-winged wood duck was uplisted from Endangered to Critically Endangered in October 2024, with Nameri National Park among its last Indian strongholds and a 70–90% global decline over three generations.
Q 15Which bloom, the kopou phul worn by Bihu dancers, is Assam's state flower?
Foxtail orchid
The foxtail orchid, Rhynchostylis retusa, is a symbol of love and fertility at Assamese weddings and doubles as the state flower of Arunachal Pradesh; its root, rasna, is used against rheumatism.
Q 16Which cetacean, called shihu in Assamese, is the official animal of the city of Guwahati?
Ganges river dolphin
The Ganges river dolphin is also India's National Aquatic Animal; nearly blind in the silty water, it navigates by echolocation, and a 2025 survey counted about 584 in the Brahmaputra mainstream.
Q 17Raised in 1835 as the Cachar Levy to guard tea gardens, which is India's oldest paramilitary force?
Assam Rifles
The Assam Rifles, nicknamed 'Sentinels of the North East', answer to the Home Ministry for administration but take their operational orders from the Army.
Q 18On entering Bangladesh, the Brahmaputra takes which name, easily confused with a Delhi river?
Jamuna
The Jamuna is not the Yamuna of northern India; the river that becomes it is also a rarity on the subcontinent for carrying a masculine name, 'son of Brahma', where most rivers are female.
Q 19Asom Divas, 2 December, marks the 1228 arrival of which Tai prince who founded the Ahom kingdom?
Sukaphaa
Sukaphaa is said to have set his first capital at Charaideo; the state fixed his remembrance day in 1996, and the name Assam itself is linked to the Ahoms, originally called Shyam or Shan.
Q 20What are the pyramid-like burial mounds of Ahom royalty at Charaideo, a UNESCO site, called?
Maidams
Maidams were looted for vault treasure by Mughals, the British and locals alike; of more than 150 at Charaideo, only 30 are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and the state.
Purandar Singha was judged incompetent and in arrears on his 50,000-rupee tribute, and his removal ended a 600-year Ahom reign; he had first been placed on the throne in 1818.
Q 24Which Mughal governor of Bengal led 323 ships up the Brahmaputra in 1662 to seize the Ahom capital?
Mir Jumla II
Mir Jumla II, an Iranian-born diamond trader turned general, crewed his fleet with Portuguese, English and Dutch sailors, took Garhgaon, and died on 30 March 1663.
Q 25Which raja of Amber lost at Saraighat in 1671 and was recalled to Aurangzeb's court in disgrace?
Ram Singh I
Ram Singh I, son of the famous Mirza Raja Jai Singh, was commissioned as a commander of 4,000 in 1667 to retake Guwahati; after the retreat his rank and standing at court collapsed.
Q 26What name is given to the Ahom chronicles first written in the Tai Ahom language on sanchi bark?
Buranjis
Buranjis, whose accounts of the Ahom–Mughal wars match Mughal chronicles such as the Padshahnama, were also written in Assamese from the 16th century and survive as puthi manuscripts.
Q 27Koch general Sukladhwaja earned the name Chilarai for moving troops as fast as which bird?
Kite
A kite, 'chila', gave Chilarai his name; fighting for his brother Naranarayan he helped subdue the whole Brahmaputra valley, Ahoms included, and went on to invade Sylhet.
Q 28By a legendary curse, members of which royal family avert their gaze when passing Kamakhya temple?
Cooch Behar
The Cooch Behar (Koch Bihar) royal house is the Koch dynasty whose king Nara Narayan completed the temple's reconstruction in 1565, yet tradition bars its members from visiting the shrine.
Q 29Guwahati's site was Pragjyotishpura, capital of which early kingdom Xuanzang visited around 643?
Kamarupa
Kamarupa's king Bhaskaravarman hosted Xuanzang and allied with Harsha of Thaneswar; the kingdom's traditional bounds ran from the Karatoya river in the west to Sadiya in the east.
Q 30Guwahati takes its name from 'guwa', the Assamese word (from Sanskrit guvaka) for which nut?
Areca nut
Areca nut, chewed with betel leaf across the region, gives the city its name; Guwahati was long spelt Gauhati and is the largest city in northeast India, styled the 'gateway to North East India'.