50 Fun Facts About Bihar

Which author of Animal Farm was born in Motihari, Bihar, in 1903, to an Opium Department official?

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair, son of a sub-deputy opium agent, and restoration of his Motihari birthplace began in 2014.

Which Mauryan-era caves in Bihar were E. M. Forster's model for the cave episode of A Passage to India?

The Barabar Caves are the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in India, and Ashoka's inscriptions there record his gift of several of them to the Ajivika sect.

Which Bihar labourer spent 22 years cutting a 110-metre path through a hill with a hammer and chisel?

Dashrath Manjhi began in 1960 after his injured wife died with the nearest doctor 70 km away round the ridge, and finished the 9-metre-wide cut in 1982.

Which native of Ziradei in Siwan district was the first President of India, from 1950 to 1962?

Rajendra Prasad was elected by the Constituent Assembly when India became a republic, and as a student he helped found the Bihari Students Conference at Patna College in 1906.

Which river, called the 'Sorrow of Bihar', jumped back into a long-abandoned channel in August 2008?

The Kosi's floods hit about 21,000 square kilometres of fertile farmland in a normal year, and on 18 August 2008 it picked up a course it had left more than a century earlier.

Bihar grows 90 percent of the world's crop of which snack seed, harvested from a prickly water lily?

Makhana comes from Euryale ferox, and the Mithila variety earned a geographical indication tag in April 2022.

Which Bihar chief minister, the state's longest-serving, declared a total liquor ban on 5 April 2016?

Nitish Kumar had announced the policy in November 2015, and in January 2017 some 30 million people formed a 12,760-kilometre human chain in support of the ban.

Which Sikh leader was born in Patna in 1666, at the spot now marked by Takht Sri Patna Sahib?

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last human Sikh Guru, was born Gobind Das while his father was away travelling in the east, and he died in 1708.

Which fried sweet of wheat flour, jaggery and ghee is the signature prasad of Bihar's Chhath Puja?

Thekua is prepared inside the worship room itself to keep it pure, and was first valued for its medicinal benefits before becoming the festival's offering.

Bihar takes its name from the Sanskrit word vihāra, which usually referred to what kind of building?

A Buddhist monastery was a vihāra, literally an 'abode', and the region was thick with them until Bakhtiyar Khalji's invasion destroyed many.

Which bridge over the Ganges at Patna, opened in 1982, was the longest bridge in India until 2017?

Mahatma Gandhi Setu runs 5,750 metres across to Hajipur and was inaugurated by Indira Gandhi in May 1982; Assam's Bhupen Hazarika Setu took the record in 2017.

Who became Bihar's first woman chief minister in July 1997, taking over after her husband resigned?

Rabri Devi, of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, held the office in three spells between July 1997 and March 2005.

Bihar Day, 22 March, marks the day in 1912 when Bihar's divisions were split off from which province?

Bengal Province lost its western divisions that day, and the state government now declares 22 March a public holiday every year.

Which modern state, split away on 1 April 1936, had shared one province with Bihar for 24 years?

Odisha, then spelt Orissa, became its own province that day, and the Odia-speaking princely states were placed under the Eastern States Agency.

Who was Bihar's first chief minister, from 1946 until his death in 1961, nicknamed Bihar Kesari?

Shri Krishna Singh, known as Shri Babu, was the first chief minister in the country to abolish the zamindari system, and owed his nickname to his lion-like roars in public speaking.

Which two-time Bihar chief minister, called Jan Nayak, received a posthumous Bharat Ratna in 2024?

Karpoori Thakur became Bihar's first non-Congress socialist chief minister in 1970 and returned in 1977, before losing a leadership battle in 1979.

Which leader, namesake of Patna's airport, sought Indira Gandhi's overthrow in a 'total revolution'?

Jayaprakash Narayan called his programme Sampoorna Kranti, and as a young activist shared a house at Kadam Kuan in Patna with the nationalist Ganga Sharan Singh.

How many members sit in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, the lower house of a two-chamber legislature?

The Assembly was cut to 243 members after the 2000 partition of the state, and Bihar's first legislative council had been set up back in July 1936.

Bihar, India's most densely populated state at the 2011 census, counted roughly how many people?

Bihar's 104 million people made it the third most populous state, packed in at 1,106 persons per square kilometre.

Into how many districts is Bihar divided, spread across nine administrative divisions?

Among the 38 districts, Patna has by far the highest per-capita income, more than double that of any other district.

Which country forms Bihar's whole northern border, its Himalayan rivers feeding the state's floods?

Nepal is the only country Bihar touches, with three Indian states wrapping its other sides and the Gandak rising in the Nepalese Himalaya.

Which ancient Bihar city, seat of the Vajjika League republic, has an Ashokan pillar with one lion?

Vaishali's 11-metre polished sandstone pillar is probably among Ashoka's earliest, and the city also claims a relic stupa said to hold the Buddha's ashes.

Which Bihar town, Magadha's first capital, is famed for its hot springs and a 1969 Vishwa Shanti Stupa?

Rajgir stayed the capital until Udayin, son of Ajatashatru, moved the court to Pataliputra in the 5th century BC, and the revived Nalanda University now has its campus there.

Which Pala-era university in eastern Bihar, founded by Dharmapala, trained the scholar Atisha?

Vikramashila was founded in the late 8th or early 9th century to answer a supposed decline at Nalanda, and Atisha went on to found the Sarma traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.

Which Bihar district, the 'Silk City', holds a 60-km Ganges sanctuary for the Gangetic dolphin?

Bhagalpur's sanctuary runs from Sultanganj to Kahalgaon and shelters an endangered species locals call 'soons', notified in 1991 under the Wildlife Protection Act.

Which Bihar town on the Ganges, site of an ordnance gun factory, is home to the Bihar School of Yoga?

Munger's school was founded by Swami Satyananda Saraswati in 1963 and hosted the World Yoga Convention for its golden jubilee in October 2013.

Which Bihar town has Sher Shah Suri's 37-metre red sandstone tomb standing in an artificial lake?

Sasaram's tomb, locally called pani roza, sits on a square plinth reached by a causeway, and the tombs of Sher Shah's father and son stand nearby.

Which beehive-shaped Patna granary of 1786 was built for the 'perpetual prevention of famine'?

Golghar was designed by the East India Company engineer John Garstin, with a spiral staircase so workers could carry grain up and tip it in through the top.

Which banana-growing town across the Ganges from Patna is headquarters of the East Central Railway?

Hajipur sits where the Gandak meets the Ganges, about 10 km from Patna, and its plains are known for litchi and mango orchards as well as bananas.

The Shahi litchi, given a Geographical Indication tag in 2018, is registered under the name of which north Bihar city?

Muzaffarpur's calcium-rich alluvial soil is credited for the fruit's quality, and Bihar supplies over 40 percent of India's litchi crop.

Which flaky layered Bihar sweet from Silao, noted by archaeologist Beglar in the 1870s, has a GI tag?

Khaja from Silao, a wheat-flour pastry fried in ghee, received its Geographical Indication tag in December 2018 from the registry in Chennai.

Which sweet of pounded sesame and jaggery, made in Gaya for 150 years, is the Bihar city's speciality?

Tilkut was first made in the princely kingdom of Tekari at Ramna in Gaya, and the city's version is still reckoned the best.

Bihar's Sonepur Mela, where the Gandak joins the Ganges, is Asia's biggest fair for trading what?

Cattle trading at Sonepur runs for anywhere between fifteen days and a month around the November–December full moon.

Pilgrims to Gaya in Bihar offer pind daan for ancestors beside the Vishnupad temple on which river?

The Phalgu's fame goes back to the Ramayana, in which Rama offered pind daan for his father Dasharatha on its banks, and the Vishnupad shrine holds a 40-centimetre footprint of Vishnu called the Dharmasila.

Which painting style, practised mainly by women of Bihar's Mithila region, takes its name from a district?

Madhubani art, also called Mithila art, was handed down through families as a skill of women, and institutions across the region still teach it.

Which north Bihar language with its own Tirhuta script entered India's Eighth Schedule in 2003?

Maithili is now mostly written in Devanagari, while Bhojpuri's inclusion in the schedule has only ever been demanded.

Which Bihar folk playwright, called the 'Shakespeare of Bhojpuri', wrote the play Bidesiya?

Bhikhari Thakur, also styled Rai Bahadur, wrote plays that mixed songs and dialogue in the manner of classical Sanskrit theatre.

Which Bihar poet, hailed as Rashtrakavi, retold the Mahabharata through Karna in Rashmirathi?

Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's verse was known for its Veer Rasa, the heroic sentiment, and Rashmirathi of 1952 is counted among the best retellings of Karna's life.

Which star of Satya and The Family Man was born in Belwa, a village near Bettiah in Bihar?

Manoj Bajpayee moved to Delhi at seventeen, and his breakthrough as the gangster Bhiku Mhatre in Satya won him the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Which Patna teacher's Super 30 programme for poor IIT aspirants became a 2019 Hrithik Roshan film?

Anand Kumar started Super 30 in 2002 after a student too poor to pay the admission fee came to him for IIT-JEE coaching.

Which Jagdishpur landowner, nearly eighty and ailing, led Bihar's rising of 1857 and seized Arrah?

Kunwar Singh went on to occupy Azamgarh in March 1858 and repel the first British attempts to retake it, dying in his home village that April.

Which Bihar tiger reserve in West Champaran shares its northern edge with Chitwan, across the border?

Valmiki National Park covers 898 square kilometres and was the country's 18th tiger reserve, with rhinoceros, elephant and sloth bear alongside its tigers.

Kanwar Lake, Asia's largest freshwater oxbow lake and Bihar's first Ramsar site, is in which district?

Begusarai's lake, also called Kabar Taal, is a leftover meander of the Burhi Gandak and was named a Ramsar wetland in November 2020.

Which polished sandstone statue, dug up on Patna's Ganges bank in 1917, now stars at the Bihar Museum?

The Didarganj Yakshi stands 1.57 metres on her pedestal in Chunar sandstone, and her finish is so fine that scholars argue whether she is Mauryan or centuries later.

Which nine-storey hall of Nalanda's library, the Dharmaganja, held its most sacred manuscripts?

Ratnodadhi, the 'Sea of Jewels', housed texts such as the Prajnaparamita Sutra and the Guhyasamaja, beside its sister buildings Ratnasagara and Ratnaranjaka.

Bihar's Sama Chakeva festival of brothers and sisters coincides with what arriving from the Himalayas?

Migratory birds reach the plains in November, and women and girls shape clay figures of Sama, Chakeva and a slanderer named Chugla whose moustache is symbolically burnt.

Which East Champaran stupa, 32 metres high, is tied to the alms bowl the Buddha gave the Licchavis?

Kesaria Stupa has a circumference of almost 400 feet and stands 110 km from Patna, matching descriptions of the monument the Licchavis raised soon after the Buddha's death.

Which Patna library opened in 1891 with 4,000 manuscripts and was declared of national importance in 1969?

Khuda Bakhsh Library began with 1,400 manuscripts its founder inherited from his father, and Parliament's 1969 Act handed its funding to the Government of India.

Which Ganges tributary rising near Amarkantak is crossed at Koilwar by India's oldest river bridge?

The Son is the second-largest southern tributary of the Ganges after the Yamuna, and joins it just west of Patna near Maner.

Which final Tirthankara of Jainism was born at Kundagrama in the Videha kingdom of what is now Bihar?

Mahavira's birthplace Kshatriyakund is traditionally placed near an ancient town on the Gangetic plain, though its exact location within Bihar is still disputed.