Bihar Trivia
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49 free Bihar trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Bihar is where a large part of India's story begins. Magadha rose here, the Buddha found enlightenment here, and the great universities of the ancient world drew students from across Asia. Today it is the most densely populated state in the country, and a place where the author of Animal Farm and the first President of India were born a few districts apart. These 49 questions cover what a Bihar searcher expects: the ancient kingdoms and their capitals, the sacred sites of Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, Patna's landmarks and Ganges crossings, rivers and floods, Chhath and the winter fairs, the sweets and fruit with geographical tags, writers and actors from the state, and the chief ministers and statehood milestones since 1912. Every answer carries a one-line explanation that adds something beyond the question. Play it to test what you know, use it as a GK round for a school or college quiz, or print it for a trivia night.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which English novelist, later a colonial policeman in Burma, was born in Motihari, Bihar?
George Orwell
George Orwell, born Eric Blair, was taken to England as a baby and brought up almost entirely by his mother.
Q 02Which Mauryan-era caves in Bihar were E. M. Forster's model for the cave episode of A Passage to India?
Barabar
The Barabar Caves' polished granite walls produce striking echoes, and Forster renamed them the Marabar Caves in his novel.
Q 03Which Bihar labourer spent 22 years cutting a 110-metre path through a hill with a hammer and chisel?
Dashrath Manjhi
Dashrath Manjhi's cut shortened the Atri–Wazirganj journey from 55 km to 15 km, and in 2015 his story became the film Manjhi – The Mountain Man.
Q 04Which native of Ziradei in Siwan district was the first President of India, from 1950 to 1962?
Rajendra Prasad
Rajendra Prasad, as a student, turned down Gokhale's invitation to join the Servants of India Society out of duty to his family.
Q 05Which river, called the 'Sorrow of Bihar', jumped back into a long-abandoned channel in August 2008?
Kosi
Kosi floodwaters broke through an embankment at Kusaha, and nearly three million people in Bihar were forced from their homes.
Q 06Bihar grows 90 percent of the world's crop of which snack seed, harvested from a prickly water lily?
Makhana
Makhana was traditionally harvested by divers groping through pond mud among thorny plants, but farmers now grow it in shallow flooded fields.
Q 07Which Bihar chief minister declared a total liquor ban across the state on 5 April 2016?
Nitish Kumar
Nitish Kumar's ban was quashed by the Patna High Court on 30 September 2016, but the Supreme Court stayed that ruling a week later.
Q 08Which Sikh leader was born in Patna in 1666, at the spot now marked by Takht Sri Patna Sahib?
Guru Gobind Singh
Guru Gobind Singh succeeded his father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, as Guru at the age of nine, and in 1699 he founded the Khalsa.
Q 09Which fried sweet of wheat flour, jaggery and ghee is the signature prasad of Bihar's Chhath Puja?
Thekua
Thekua, like the rest of the Chhath prasad, is traditionally cooked on a clay stove fired with mango wood.
Q 10Which adviser to Chandragupta Maurya, who helped topple Magadha's Nanda kings, is traditionally credited with the Arthashastra?
Chanakya
Chanakya's Arthashastra dropped out of use for centuries, until librarian R. Shamasastry recognised a palm-leaf copy among the manuscripts of a Mysore library in 1905.
Q 11Which bridge over the Ganges at Patna, opened in 1982, was the longest bridge in India until 2017?
Mahatma Gandhi Setu
Mahatma Gandhi Setu's worn concrete superstructure was replaced with steel, and the rebuilt bridge reopened in full in June 2022.
Q 12Who became Bihar's first woman chief minister in July 1997, taking over after her husband resigned?
Rabri Devi
Rabri Devi replaced her husband Lalu Prasad Yadav after the fodder scam forced him to resign, and she governed until 2005.
Q 13Bihar Day, 22 March, marks the day in 1912 when Bihar's divisions were split off from which province?
Bengal
Bengal was reunited in 1911 after protests against Curzon's partition, and the reorganisation that followed separated Bihar.
Q 21Which country borders Bihar to the north, its Himalayan rivers feeding the state's floods?
Nepal
Nepal's 1950 treaty with India keeps their border open, so Nepali citizens can cross into Bihar and work in India without a work permit.
Q 22Which ancient Bihar city, seat of the Vajjika League republic, has an Ashokan pillar and a Buddha relic stupa?
Vaishali
Vaishali is where, in Buddhist tradition, the Buddha first admitted women as nuns, after his foster mother Mahapajapati walked there with 500 women.
Q 23Which Bihar town, Magadha's first capital, is famed for its hot springs and the Vishwa Shanti Stupa?
Rajgir
Rajgir is where, Buddhist texts say, monks led by Mahakassapa held the First Buddhist Council soon after the Buddha's death to recite his teachings together.
Q 14Which modern state, split away on 1 April 1936, had shared one province with Bihar for 24 years?
Odisha
Odisha, then spelt Orissa, became a separate province after decades of agitation to unite the Odia-speaking tracts scattered across neighbouring provinces.
Q 15Who was Bihar's first chief minister, serving until his death in 1961, nicknamed Bihar Kesari?
Shri Krishna Singh
Shri Krishna Singh's ministry resigned in February 1938 when British authorities refused to free Bihar's remaining political prisoners.
Q 16Which two-time Bihar chief minister, called Jan Nayak, received a posthumous Bharat Ratna in 2024?
Karpoori Thakur
Karpoori Thakur ordered 26 per cent reservation in government jobs for Bihar's backward classes in 1978, a model for the later Mandal Commission reforms.
Q 17Which leader, namesake of Patna's airport, sought Indira Gandhi's overthrow in a 'total revolution'?
Jayaprakash Narayan
Jayaprakash Narayan's movement coalesced into the Janata Party, which in 1977 formed India's first non-Congress national government.
Q 18Bihar's Assembly shrank to 243 seats after which state was carved out of Bihar?
Jharkhand
Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar on 15 November 2000, a date timed to the birth anniversary of the Adivasi leader Birsa Munda.
Q 19Bihar was India's third most populous state at the 2011 census, behind Uttar Pradesh and which state?
Maharashtra
Maharashtra had about 112 million people in 2011, but Bihar squeezed its 104 million into less than a third of the area, making it India's most densely populated state.
Q 20In which Bihar region did Mahatma Gandhi back indigo farmers in a 1917 satyagraha?
Champaran
Champaran's tenants were bound to plant indigo on part of their land, and Gandhi refused an official order to leave until his inquiry was finished.
Q 24Which Pala-era university on the Ganges in eastern Bihar was founded by King Dharmapala?
Vikramashila
Vikramashila was a centre of Buddhist Tantra, and Dharmapala is said to have chosen its Ganges hillside because it was already a popular Tantric site.
Q 25Which Bihar district, the 'Silk City', holds a Ganges sanctuary for the Gangetic dolphin?
Bhagalpur
Bhagalpur's sanctuary guards the Gangetic dolphin, which India named its national aquatic animal in 2009 as a symbol of the Ganges' health.
Q 26Which Bihar town on the Ganges, site of a gun factory, is home to the Bihar School of Yoga?
Munger
Munger's yoga school took its teaching far beyond the ashram, and its programmes are now used in hospitals, defence institutions and even prisons.
Q 27Which Bihar town has the tomb of Sher Shah Suri, standing in the middle of an artificial lake?
Sasaram
Sasaram's lake tomb honours Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan ruler who drove the Mughal emperor Humayun out of Delhi and took northern India for himself.
Q 28Which banana-growing town across the Ganges from Patna is headquarters of the East Central Railway?
Hajipur
Hajipur became a zonal railway headquarters under Ram Vilas Paswan, its long-serving MP, who took charge of India's railways in 1996.
Q 29Which north Bihar city, nicknamed India's 'Litchi Kingdom', is famed for its Shahi litchis?
Muzaffarpur
Muzaffarpur's litchi season has coincided with deadly child encephalitis outbreaks, and researchers have named toxins in unripe litchis as a possible cause.
Q 30Which flaky layered Bihar sweet from Silao, noted by archaeologist Beglar in the 1870s, has a GI tag?
Khaja
Khaja from Silao is said to have been offered to the Buddha as he passed through the town on his way to Nalanda.