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50 free Bihar trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which author of Animal Farm was born in Motihari, Bihar, in 1903, to an Opium Department official?
George Orwell
George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair, son of a sub-deputy opium agent, and restoration of his Motihari birthplace began in 2014.
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 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.
Q 03Which Bihar labourer spent 22 years cutting a 110-metre path through a hill with a hammer and chisel?
Dashrath Manjhi
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.
Q 04Which native of Ziradei in Siwan district was the first President of India, from 1950 to 1962?
Rajendra Prasad
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.
Q 05Which river, called the 'Sorrow of Bihar', jumped back into a long-abandoned channel in August 2008?
Kosi
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.
Q 06Bihar grows 90 percent of the world's crop of which snack seed, harvested from a prickly water lily?
Makhana
Makhana comes from Euryale ferox, and the Mithila variety earned a geographical indication tag in April 2022.
Q 07Which Bihar chief minister, the state's longest-serving, declared a total liquor ban on 5 April 2016?
Nitish Kumar
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.
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, 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.
Q 09Which fried sweet of wheat flour, jaggery and ghee is the signature prasad of Bihar's Chhath Puja?
Thekua
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.
Q 10Bihar takes its name from the Sanskrit word vihāra, which usually referred to what kind of building?
Buddhist monastery
A Buddhist monastery was a vihāra, literally an 'abode', and the region was thick with them until Bakhtiyar Khalji's invasion destroyed many.
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 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.
Q 12Who became Bihar's first woman chief minister in July 1997, taking over after her husband resigned?
Rabri Devi
Rabri Devi, of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, held the office in three spells between July 1997 and March 2005.
Q 13Bihar Day, 22 March, marks the day in 1912 when Bihar's divisions were split off from which province?
Bengal
Q 21Which country forms Bihar's whole northern border, its Himalayan rivers feeding the state's floods?
Nepal
Nepal is the only country Bihar touches, with three Indian states wrapping its other sides and the Gandak rising in the Nepalese Himalaya.
Q 22Which ancient Bihar city, seat of the Vajjika League republic, has an Ashokan pillar with one lion?
Vaishali
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.
Q 23Which Bihar town, Magadha's first capital, is famed for its hot springs and a 1969 Vishwa Shanti Stupa?
Rajgir
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.
Bengal Province lost its western divisions that day, and the state government now declares 22 March a public holiday every year.
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 its own province that day, and the Odia-speaking princely states were placed under the Eastern States Agency.
Q 15Who was Bihar's first chief minister, from 1946 until his death in 1961, nicknamed Bihar Kesari?
Shri Krishna Singh
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.
Q 16Which two-time Bihar chief minister, called Jan Nayak, received a posthumous Bharat Ratna in 2024?
Karpoori Thakur
Karpoori Thakur became Bihar's first non-Congress socialist chief minister in 1970 and returned in 1977, before losing a leadership battle in 1979.
Q 17Which leader, namesake of Patna's airport, sought Indira Gandhi's overthrow in a 'total revolution'?
Jayaprakash Narayan
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.
Q 18How many members sit in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, the lower house of a two-chamber legislature?
243
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.
Q 19Bihar, India's most densely populated state at the 2011 census, counted roughly how many people?
104 million
Bihar's 104 million people made it the third most populous state, packed in at 1,106 persons per square kilometre.
Q 20Into how many districts is Bihar divided, spread across nine administrative divisions?
38
Among the 38 districts, Patna has by far the highest per-capita income, more than double that of any other district.
Q 24Which Pala-era university in eastern Bihar, founded by Dharmapala, trained the scholar Atisha?
Vikramashila
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.
Q 25Which Bihar district, the 'Silk City', holds a 60-km Ganges sanctuary for the Gangetic dolphin?
Bhagalpur
Bhagalpur's sanctuary runs from Sultanganj to Kahalgaon and shelters an endangered species locals call 'soons', notified in 1991 under the Wildlife Protection Act.
Q 26Which Bihar town on the Ganges, site of an ordnance gun factory, is home to the Bihar School of Yoga?
Munger
Munger's school was founded by Swami Satyananda Saraswati in 1963 and hosted the World Yoga Convention for its golden jubilee in October 2013.
Q 27Which Bihar town has Sher Shah Suri's 37-metre red sandstone tomb standing in an artificial lake?
Sasaram
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.
Q 28Which beehive-shaped Patna granary of 1786 was built for the 'perpetual prevention of famine'?
Golghar
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.
Q 29Which banana-growing town across the Ganges from Patna is headquarters of the East Central Railway?
Hajipur
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.
Q 30The Shahi litchi, given a Geographical Indication tag in 2018, is registered under the name of which north Bihar city?
Muzaffarpur
Muzaffarpur's calcium-rich alluvial soil is credited for the fruit's quality, and Bihar supplies over 40 percent of India's litchi crop.