Dussehra Trivia
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49 free Dussehra trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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 49 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 49 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 covers two triumphs at once: in the north the day marks Rama's defeat of the ten-headed Ravana, in the east the goddess Durga's defeat of the buffalo demon Mahishasura.
Q 02The giant Ravana effigies set alight on Dussehra evening are traditionally stuffed with what?
Firecrackers
Firecrackers packed inside the towering figures go off as the flames climb, so the demon king's end at dusk comes with a roar.
Q 03In 1956 B. R. Ambedkar chose Vijayadashami to lead a mass conversion of his followers at Nagpur into which religion?
Buddhism
Buddhism gained hundreds of thousands of converts in a single day, and Ambedkar had the crowd recite 22 vows that rejected Hindu rites and pledged belief in the equality of all people.
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 so many people head home to receive the tika from their elders that Kathmandu noticeably empties during the festival.
Q 06Mysore Dasara, a ten-day royal spectacle first held at Srirangapatna, is the state festival of which Indian state?
Karnataka
Karnataka calls it Nadahabba, the state festival: a local king began it at Srirangapatna in 1610, taking over a royal Navaratri tradition from 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 09Durga 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 clay images dissolve, and the custom stands for the goddess leaving for the Himalayan home of her husband Shiva until the next year.
Q 10Which 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 11Durga Puja opens with Mahalaya, when Bengali Hindus perform tarpana by offering water and food to whom?
Their ancestors
Their ancestors receive the offerings on the last day of a fortnight given over to the dead, and only then does the festival heralding the goddess's arrival begin.
Q 12Telangana's Bathukamma, ending on Durgashtami, stacks what in concentric layers shaped like a temple gopuram?
Flowers
Flowers gathered from the wild plains, many of them medicinal, are stacked row on row into a cone, and at the end the women set it afloat on a pond or lake.
Q 13South Indians venerate books, pens and musical instruments at the close of Navratri chiefly in honour of which goddess?
Saraswati
Q 21Mysore 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 ground where the procession halts to worship the banni tree, in which legend says the Pandavas hid their weapons during exile.
Q 22Kullu Dussehra begins on Vijayadashami, just as other celebrations end, in which mountain state of India?
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal Pradesh's Kullu valley fills for a week as village deities are carried in from across the region, and no Ravana effigy is burned.
Q 23Kullu Dussehra centres on which god, whose idol Raja Jagat Singh placed on his own throne as an act of penance?
Raghunath
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 14In 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 15In Durga Puja legend, what did Rama prepare to offer on finding only 107 of 108 lotuses?
His eye
His eye was about to be plucked out when Durga appeared and restored the missing lotus, which she had hidden to test his devotion.
Q 16Hindus across India hold Vijayadashami especially auspicious for doing what?
Starting a new venture
Starting a new venture on the day is thought to bring success, which is why children are given their first lessons on it and artists and craftsmen take up their tools again.
Q 17Which 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 18On each evening of Mysore Dasara, the royal palace is outlined by nearly 100,000 of what?
Light bulbs
Light bulbs, nearly 100,000 of them, are switched on each evening of the ten-day festival, so the whole palace glows while music and dance are staged in front of it.
Q 19Mysore Dasara marks the slaying of the buffalo demon by which goddess, a form of Durga carried on the lead elephant?
Chamundeshwari
Chamundeshwari's idol rides in the golden howdah, and legend has her killing the demon on the hill above the city, where her temple still stands.
Q 20Which 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 empire, and in 2014, with no head of the family installed, the royal sword was placed on the golden throne and honoured in his place.
Raghunath, a form of Rama, was declared the ruling deity of the valley after the king's penance, and gods from the surrounding villages are still carried in each year to pay him homage.
Q 24Bastar Dussehra in Chhattisgarh, honouring a local goddess rather than Rama's win over Ravana, runs how many days?
75
75 days of rites open with Pat Jatra, when the forest and its wood are honoured before timber is cut for the huge chariot that is later hauled through the town.
Q 25Most North Indian Ramlila plays follow which 16th-century verse retelling of the Ramayana by the poet Tulsidas?
Ramcharitmanas
Ramcharitmanas was written in Awadhi, a form of Hindi, rather than Sanskrit, to open the epic to everyone, which is why ordinary villagers could recite it and act it out.
Q 26Delhi'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 floodplain hosted the Ramlila until the pond was filled in to give it a new home, and the ground soon became Delhi's stage for mass political rallies, Gandhi's among them.
Q 27Indentured labourers carried Ramlila abroad; it is still staged in Fiji, Mauritius and which Caribbean nation?
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago's Ramleela at the village of Felicity opens Derek Walcott's 1992 Nobel lecture, in which the poet watches the bamboo frame of a giant effigy being readied for the fire.
Q 28Bengali families wake before dawn on Mahalaya for the Mahishasuramardini programme, aired every year since the 1930s by which broadcaster?
All India Radio
All India Radio tried a remake in 1976 voiced by film star Uttam Kumar, and listeners disliked it so much that the original, narrated by Birendra Krishna Bhadra, was brought back.
Q 29The dhunuchi naach danced before Durga's idol during Durga Puja is performed while holding what?
An incense burner
An incense burner, in which coconut husk and incense smoulder, is swung to the beat of the dhak drums, and many puja committees hold contests for the best dancer.
Q 30At Kerala's Vidyarambham rite on Vijayadashami, a child's first letters are written in what?
Grains of rice
Grains of rice spread before the child take the first letters, traced with the child's own finger as an elder guides the hand, and lessons in music and dance begin on the same day.