Indian Mythology Trivia
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50 free Indian Mythology trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Indian mythology is far bigger than the famous avatars. It includes the storm god who dominates the Rigveda, a prince who gave away his own children to perfect his generosity, a fable about a creature dyed blue who briefly ruled the forest, and a temple deity still paying off a wedding loan with his devotees' offerings. This quiz ranges across that wider story-world: the Vedic deities and Upanishadic tales, Buddhist and Jain legends, the Panchatantra fables that travelled to Persia and Europe, episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata that rarely make the highlight reel, mythical creatures, sacred mountains, rivers and cities, and the regional and folk deities of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra and Assam. It is written for players who already know the headline gods and want the stories behind the rest, and for quiz hosts who need verified questions with a clear explanation for every answer. Every question cites the page that establishes it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Tibetan peak, never successfully climbed, is Shiva's abode to Hindus and sacred to Buddhists, Jains and Bon?
Mount Kailash
Mount Kailash is off limits under a Chinese ban on climbing it; Reinhold Messner, offered a permit in the 1980s, turned it down, and pilgrims walk a circuit around the mountain instead.
Q 02Which pilgrimage rotates among four cities where drops of the gods' nectar of immortality are said to have fallen?
Kumbh Mela
The Kumbh Mela is held at Prayagraj, Haridwar, Nashik and Ujjain on a cycle tied to Jupiter's orbit, and the 2025 gathering at Prayagraj drew about 660 million people, the largest on record.
Q 03What did Queen Maya dream entered her right side on the night she conceived the future Buddha, Siddhartha?
A white elephant
A white elephant holding a lotus circled Queen Maya three times and entered her womb through her right side; the Buddha-to-be had chosen that form in the Tushita heaven for his final rebirth.
Q 04What did the Buddha tell the grieving mother Kisa Gotami to fetch from a house where no one had ever died?
Mustard seeds
Mustard seeds were the price of reviving her child, and Kisa Gotami went door to door before realising no family is free of death; she later became a nun and an arhat.
Q 05What did the infant Hanuman leap up to eat, mistaking it for a ripe fruit, until a thunderbolt broke his jaw?
The sun
The sun looked like a ripe fruit to the hungry child; the disfigured jaw (hanu) the thunderbolt left him is one explanation of the name Hanuman.
Q 06Which Puri festival, whose huge temple cars are hard to stop once rolling, gave English the word 'juggernaut'?
Rath Yatra
Rath Yatra hauls Jagannath and his siblings through Puri on wagons so heavy that hundreds of devotees must pull each one; travellers' tales of pilgrims crushed under the wheels, much exaggerated, gave 'juggernaut' its menace.
Q 07Which scholar is said to have written the Panchatantra to make King Amarashakti's three dull sons wise in six months?
Vishnu Sharma
Vishnu Sharma refused the king's offer of a hundred land grants, saying he did not sell knowledge for money, and taught the princes statecraft through animal fables instead.
Q 08Which spirit inside a corpse hung from a tree told King Vikramaditya twenty-five stories, each ending in a riddle?
A vetala
A vetala can enter and leave a dead body at will; it flies back to its tree each time the king solves a riddle, until a last puzzle about a tangled family tree leaves him silent and wins its respect.
Q 09Which body of some 547 stories in the Pali canon recounts the Buddha's earlier lives as animals, kings and sages?
The Jataka tales
The Jataka tales cast the Buddha-to-be as a hero who suffers for others: as a monkey king he stretches his own body into a bridge so his troop can flee a king's archers, a scene carved in stone at Bharhut.
Q 10Which elderly ascetic offered Rama berries she had bitten into first, keeping only the sweet ones for him?
Shabari
Shabari did not know that offerings must never be tasted, and Rama, who passed by hundreds of waiting yogis to visit her hut, accepted the berries gladly.
Q 11Which Vedic god, praised in about a quarter of the Rigveda, slew the asura Vritra and brought the rains?
Indra
Indra is the most-mentioned god in the Rigveda, where his thunderbolt frees the waters Vritra had held back; later Hinduism put Vishnu and Shiva above him, and he survives as a lesser god of rain and storms.
Q 12Which Vedic god, who carries burnt offerings up to the other gods, is the first word of the Rigveda?
Agni
Agni's name is the first word of the Rigveda; because fire is held to witness every important act, Hindu couples still take their wedding vows around a sacred flame.
Q 13Which boy, given to Death by his angry father, waited three days unfed at Yama's door to ask what comes after death?
Nachiketa
Q 21Which farmer's wife fed the emaciated Siddhartha a bowl of milk-rice pudding, ending his six years of austerities?
Sujata
Sujata mistook the skeletal ascetic for a tree spirit that had granted her wish for a child, and her kheer gave the Buddha the strength to abandon extreme asceticism for the Middle Way.
Q 22Which brigand, tasked by his teacher with collecting a thousand human fingers, was converted by the Buddha?
Angulimala
Angulimala's killings emptied whole villages and brought out King Pasenadi's army, yet after ordaining he became the textbook case of the Buddha's power to redeem, and his verse is still chanted to protect women in childbirth.
Q 23Which animal leapt into a beggar's fire to be his meal, in a Buddhist tale, earning its likeness on the moon?
A rabbit
Nachiketa used the third of three boons to demand the secret of what survives death, which Yama first tried to buy off with wealth, long life and sons before teaching him in the Katha Upanishad.
Q 14Which boy, barred from King Uttanapada's lap by a jealous stepmother, meditated until Vishnu made him the Pole Star?
Dhruva
Dhruva was five when he left for the forest, and Vishnu set him in the sky beside the seven sages of the Great Bear so that every star would turn around him; his name means 'fixed' or 'immovable'.
Q 15Which king sold his wife and son, then himself to a cremation-ground keeper, rather than break a promise to a sage?
Harishchandra
Harishchandra was bought by a chandala and set to collect fees for every body burned at Kashi's cremation ground, keeping only a share of the takings as his wage.
Q 16Which king, cursed with premature old age by his father-in-law Shukra, swapped it for his son Puru's youth?
Yayati
Yayati enjoyed the senses for a thousand years with Puru's youth before concluding that desire is never quenched by indulgence; he handed the youth back and made Puru his heir, and the Kuru dynasty later arose from Puru's line.
Q 17Which animal, in a Panchatantra fable, fell into a dyer's indigo vat and ruled the forest as a strange new king?
A jackal
A jackal, stained blue, had the other beasts bringing him food as their ruler, until he heard jackals howling and howled back, which showed them what he was.
Q 18What did the Panchatantra's monkey Red-Face claim to keep in a hole in his rose-apple tree, escaping a crocodile?
His heart
His heart, the monkey said, was a second and sweeter one kept at home, so the crocodile, whose wife craved it, swam him back to shore, and the monkey sprang to safety and mocked him.
Q 19Which pet did a Brahmin's wife kill in a Panchatantra tale, assuming its bloodied mouth meant it had eaten her baby?
A mongoose
A mongoose had in fact torn a black snake to pieces beside the cradle, and the mother, realising her mistake, mourned the loyal animal she had crushed with her water jar.
Q 20Which demon sent an army and a vision of beautiful maidens to break Siddhartha's meditation under the Bodhi tree?
Mara
Mara personifies everything hostile to enlightenment, and the Buddha answered his challenge by touching the earth as his witness, the 'earth-witness' gesture seen on countless statues.
A rabbit, with only grass to offer, threw itself on the coals, which would not burn it; the beggar was the god Śakra in disguise, who painted a hare on the Moon so that its virtue would be remembered for an age.
Q 24Which prince of a Buddhist birth story gave his two children to the greedy brahmin Jujaka as servants?
Vessantara
Vessantara's giving had already got him banished to the forest. In Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia, monks still recite the whole tale at a yearly festival.
Q 25Where did the Buddha die, lying in a grove of sal trees after a meal at Pava had left him gravely ill?
Kushinagar
Kushinagar is where the Buddha attained parinirvana at eighty and was cremated seven days later, after which a Brahmin named Drona divided the ashes into eight portions to end a dispute between clans.
Q 26What does Tirthankara, the Jain title for each of the 24 teachers who appear in every age, literally mean?
Ford-maker
Ford-maker is the literal sense: each Tirthankara crosses the stream of rebirth and leaves a path for others to follow. Victor translates Jina, the title that gives Jainism its name, and Mahavira means great hero.
Q 27Which first Tirthankara, whose emblem is a bull, is said to have taught humanity farming, writing, trade and crafts?
Rishabhanatha
Rishabhanatha taught six professions, swordsmanship, writing, agriculture, knowledge, trade and crafts, when the wish-fulfilling trees that had fed humanity began to fail.
Q 28Which Jain prince stood meditating for a year while vines climbed his legs, as a colossal Karnataka statue shows?
Bahubali
Bahubali's Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola, carved from a single block of granite, is bathed in milk, saffron and ghee at a festival held once every twelve years.
Q 29Which Tirthankara, born 273 years before Mahavira in Varanasi, is always shown with a canopy of serpent hoods?
Parshvanatha
Parshvanatha is the earliest Tirthankara historians accept as a real person, and his followers, unlike Mahavira's, were allowed simple outer garments and were not bound to celibacy.
Q 30Which wingless vulture, burned shielding his brother Jatayu, told Hanuman's search party where Ravana held Sita?
Sampati
Sampati lost his wings spreading them over Jatayu when the young brothers raced each other too high into the noon sky; grounded on the southern shore, he could still see Lanka a hundred yojanas away across the sea.