Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Dussehra trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Dussehra is one festival with a dozen faces. In the north it is Ravan Dahan, a towering effigy going up in flames after days of Ramlila; in Mysore it is a royal procession led by elephants; in Bengal it is the tearful last day of Durga Puja; in the south it is a day for blessing tools, books and the first letters a child ever writes. These 50 questions walk through that whole map: what the names Dussehra and Vijayadashami mean, where the day sits in the Hindu calendar, who burns beside Ravana, the Pandavas' hidden weapons, Kullu's fair, Bastar's marathon celebration, Nepal's biggest festival and the rites of Bengal, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It suits anyone who has watched an effigy burn and wondered why, families explaining the festival to children, and quiz hosts who want questions that go past the obvious. Every answer is sourced and explained.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vijayadashami, the formal name of Dussehra, joins the Sanskrit words vijaya and dashami, which together mean what?
Victory on the tenth day
Victory on the tenth day is the literal sense, and the shorter name Dussehra comes from dashahara, a second compound meaning simply 'tenth day'. Both names point to the date, not to any one story.
Q 02The giant Ravana effigies set alight on Dussehra evening are stuffed with what, so that they burst as the flames climb?
Firecrackers
Firecrackers packed inside the bamboo-and-paper figures turn Ravan Dahan into a controlled explosion, and the tallest fairground effigies now top the height of a six-storey building. The biggest burnings draw crowds of many thousands.
Q 03In 1956 B. R. Ambedkar chose Vijayadashami to lead 600,000 followers at Nagpur into which religion?
Buddhism
Buddhism gained roughly 600,000 converts in a single day, and Ambedkar had the crowd recite 22 vows renouncing caste. Ambedkarites still mark the date each year as Dhammachakra Pravartan Din.
Q 04Besides Ravana himself, which two members of his family are burned as effigies at Dussehra's Ravan Dahan?
Kumbhakarna and Meghnad
Kumbhakarna and Meghnad, Ravana's giant brother and his warrior son, go up on the same bonfire, so three figures burn rather than one. Vibhishana, the brother who defected to Rama, is spared.
Q 05Which festival, Nepal's longest, has elders press a tika of vermilion onto the foreheads of younger relatives?
Dashain
Dashain is Nepal's counterpart to Dussehra, and the tika blessing is handed out in workplaces and even the presidential palace on the main day. Families travel across the country for it.
Q 06Mysore Dasara, a ten-day royal spectacle first held at Srirangapatna, is the state festival of which Indian state?
Karnataka
Karnataka calls it Nada Habba, the state festival, and the celebration passed its 400th anniversary in 2010. Its roots lie in the Mahanavami feasts of the Vijayanagara emperors.
Q 07Dussehra is fixed by the lunar month of Ashvin, so in which pair of Gregorian months does it always fall?
September or October
September or October is when the waxing-moon count reaches day ten in Ashvin, the seventh month of the Hindu lunisolar year. The date drifts by weeks from one year to the next.
Q 08The Navaratri that ends at Dussehra is called Sharada Navaratri, a name that refers to which season?
Autumn
Autumn is what Sharada means, and this post-monsoon Navaratri is the most celebrated of the seasonal ones. A spring Navaratri in the month of Chaitra ends with Ram Navami instead.
Q 09Nepal's biggest Hindu festival, which ends on the full moon of Kojagrat Purnima, runs for how many days?
Fifteen
Fifteen days makes it the longest festival in Nepal's calendar, though only the first, seventh-to-eleventh and last days see the big rituals. Demand for meat soars across the fortnight of feasting.
Q 10Durga Puja ends on Vijayadashami with a procession in which the clay images of the goddess are finally what?
Immersed in water
Immersed in water, the unfired clay dissolves, and the goddess is understood to have gone home to Shiva. In one city the idol has been carried out on boats for more than 150 years.
Q 11Which observance late in Navratri has South Indians clean, garland and worship their tools, vehicles and books?
Ayudha Puja
Ayudha Puja means 'worship of tools', and everything from a soldier's weapons to a student's pens gets a smear of sandalwood paste and vermilion after a polish. Vehicles are painted or polished first.
Q 12Durga Puja opens with Mahalaya, when Bengali Hindus perform tarpana by offering water and food to whom?
Their ancestors
Their ancestors receive the offerings, and only after the dead are honoured is the goddess invited down for the ten days that follow. Mahalaya is also when Bengal wakes before dawn for a famous two-hour recital.
Q 13Telangana's Bathukamma, ending on Durgashtami, stacks what in concentric layers shaped like a temple gopuram?
Q 21Which royal house of Mysore began its Dasara in 1610 and still has a Maharaja preside over a palace durbar?
The Wodeyars
The Wodeyars inherited the festival from the Vijayanagara emperors they once served, and in 2014, between reigns, the royal sword was placed on the golden throne instead. The durbar tradition dates from 1805.
Q 22Mysore Dasara's procession ends at Bannimantap, where the evening of Vijayadashami brings which closing spectacle?
A torchlight parade
A torchlight parade, the Panjina Kavayatthu, closes the festival on the grounds where the sacred banni tree is worshipped. Bike parades now share the same arena.
Q 23Kullu Dussehra at Dhalpur maidan in Himachal Pradesh begins on Vijayadashami, when others end, and lasts how long?
Flowers
Flowers from the wild plains, many with medicinal uses, are built into a cone by the women of a household and finally floated on a lake. A record stack rose more than 63 feet.
Q 14South Indians venerate books, pens and musical instruments at the close of Navratri chiefly in honour of which goddess?
Saraswati
Saraswati, goddess of learning, is the reason textbooks are set aside untouched for a day and reopened on Vijayadashami. Lakshmi and Parvati share the altar but not the top billing.
Q 15In the Mahabharata, Vijayadashami is the day Arjuna dropped his disguise at Virata to rout which army?
The Kauravas
The Kauravas attacked Virata in the Pandavas' last year of hiding, and Arjuna beat the entire force after retrieving his weapons from their hiding place. Dussehra thus carries a Mahabharata story as well as a Ramayana one.
Q 16Durga Puja's sandhi puja, at the turn of Ashtami into Navami, offers how many lotuses and lights as many lamps?
108
108 lotuses recall the legend that Rama, finding only 107, offered one of his own eyes before Durga stopped him. The rite falls at the exact junction of the two days, so its clock time shifts every year.
Q 17Because the Pandavas ended their exile on Vijayadashami, Hindus hold the day auspicious for doing what?
Starting a new venture
Starting a new venture on the day needs no astrologer, which is why first lessons are given and new businesses are opened on it across India. It is one of the few dates treated as auspicious all day long.
Q 18Which tree's leaves, nicknamed sonpatta, do families in Maharashtra hand out on Dussehra as a token of gold?
Apta
Apta leaves, from Bauhinia racemosa, are exchanged as symbolic gold, and even the Warli and Kokna tribal communities keep the custom. Sonpatta simply means 'leaves of gold'.
Q 19The golden howdah that carries the goddess's idol on Mysore Dasara's lead elephant weighs roughly how much?
750 kg
750 kg is the weight of the howdah, a gilded wooden frame that rides on one tusker's back for the whole procession, a job one elephant held for 13 years straight. The idol inside is the festival's real guest of honour.
Q 20Mysore Dasara marks the slaying of the buffalo demon by which goddess, a form of Durga carried on the lead elephant?
Chamundeshwari
Chamundeshwari's idol is the only passenger in the golden howdah, and the royal festival has revered her as the warrior goddess since its founding in 1610. Some texts simply call her Durga.
Seven days
Seven days of fair and procession draw an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 visitors into the valley, and the state government has branded it an international festival. Its origins go back to the 1600s.
Q 24Kullu Dussehra centres on which god, whose idol Raja Jagat Singh placed on his own throne as an act of penance?
Raghunath
Raghunath, a form of Rama, was declared ruling deity of the valley after the king, cursed by a man he had hounded to his death, made himself merely the god's regent. Village gods are still carried in to pay him homage.
Q 25Bastar Dussehra in Chhattisgarh, honouring a local goddess rather than Rama's win over Ravana, runs how many days?
75
75 days makes it the longest Dussehra anywhere, and its climax has a huge wooden chariot hauled through Jagdalpur by up to 400 people. Rites run from the dark fortnight of Shravan to the thirteenth day of the bright fortnight of Ashvin.
Q 26Most North Indian Ramlila plays follow which 16th-century verse retelling of the Ramayana by the poet Tulsidas?
Ramcharitmanas
Ramcharitmanas was written in Awadhi rather than Sanskrit, which is why villagers could act it out, and tradition says Tulsidas's pupil Megha Bhagat staged the first such play in 1625. Fiji and Mauritius still perform it.
Q 27Delhi's Ramlila Maidan was a pond until the 1930s; the Ramlila moved there from the riverbank behind which monument?
The Red Fort
The Red Fort's sandy riverbank hosted Delhi's first Ramlila, staged in the 1800s by Hindu soldiers of the Mughal army. A small pond survives inside the ground as a reminder of the old lake.
Q 28Indentured labourers carried Ramlila abroad; it is still staged in Fiji, Mauritius and which Caribbean nation?
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago stages open-air Ramlilas every year, a legacy of indentured workers shipped from India under colonial rule. Guyana and Suriname inherited the same tradition.
Q 29Bengali families wake at 4 a.m. on Mahalaya for the Mahishasuramardini programme, broadcast since the 1950s by whom?
All India Radio
All India Radio's two-hour recital of chants by Birendra Krishna Bhadra and Pankaj Kumar Mullick has opened Durga Puja since the 1950s, and a pre-dawn wake-up to hear it is a ritual in itself. The text is the Devi Mahatmyam.
Q 30The dhunuchi naach danced before Durga's idol during Durga Puja is performed while holding what?
An incense burner
An incense burner, smouldering with dried coconut and incense, is swung to the beat of the dhak drums, and at home pujas married women balance the burners on head and hands. The smoke is itself an offering.