Sanskrit Trivia
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50 free Sanskrit trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sanskrit has almost no native speakers, yet it is everywhere: in loanwords you use without noticing, in the mottos on Indian emblems and military crests, in film scores and pop albums, and in a grammar so precise that linguists still marvel at it two and a half thousand years on. These 50 questions start with the language itself, its name, its numbers and cases, the scripts it has borrowed, then move outward into the Vedas and epics, Kalidasa and the classical dramatists, the mantras that reached Hollywood and the Beatles, the states and villages keeping it alive, and the English words that began in it. It suits language lovers, students of Indian culture and anyone who enjoys an etymology with a twist: play on your phone with instant explanations, or print it for a quiz night. Every answer is cited to a reference page.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fruit's English name travelled from Sanskrit nāraṅga through Persian, Arabic and Old French?
Orange
Orange named the fruit for centuries before English used it for the colour, and the Sanskrit word itself was probably borrowed from a Dravidian language.
Q 02Which English word comes from Sanskrit jaṅgala, which described rough, arid land rather than dense forest?
Jungle
Jungle flipped its meaning on the way into English: Sanskrit jaṅgala meant rough and arid terrain, and the word reached English in the 18th century through jangal, the Hindustani word for forest.
Q 03Which confection's name is traced through French and Arabic qandi to Sanskrit khaṇḍa, a piece of sugar?
Candy
Candy probably goes back to khaṇḍa, the pieces of sugar that ancient Indians made by boiling down sugarcane juice; the word arrived in English as sugre-candi.
Q 04Which Star Wars film's 'Duel of the Fates' has a choir singing a Welsh poem translated into Sanskrit?
The Phantom Menace
The Phantom Menace debuts the piece during its final lightsaber duel, with John Williams having the London Voices sing lines from the medieval Welsh poem Cad Goddeu in Sanskrit.
Q 05Which Sanskrit motto, 'truth alone triumphs', sits beneath the Lion Capital on India's state emblem?
Satyameva Jayate
Satyameva Jayate comes from the Mundaka Upanishad and was adopted as India's national motto on 26 January 1950, the day the republic was born, so it now appears on every banknote.
Q 06Which big cat's name reached English via Hindi from Sanskrit chitraka, literally 'speckled' or 'variegated'?
Cheetah
Cheetah takes its name from the spotted coat the Sanskrit word describes; the animal itself is built for speed, with a small head, deep chest and long limbs.
Q 07Sanskrit nouns and verbs distinguish three grammatical numbers: singular, plural and which other?
Dual
Dual number is a fully working category in Sanskrit, used not just for natural pairs like hands or eyes but for any collection of two things.
Q 08Guru, now English for any expert, is a Sanskrit adjective that literally means what?
Heavy
Heavy is the root sense, glossed by tradition as 'heavy with knowledge' or weighty with spiritual wisdom, which is why a guru outranks a mere instructor.
Q 09Which 2004 science-fiction TV series uses a version of the Sanskrit Gayatri mantra as its title music?
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica's title music, credited as 'Gayatri' by Richard Gibbs, carries the Rigveda verse over the opening credits of a show about robots hunting the last humans.
Q 10Avatar, the Sanskrit word James Cameron borrowed for his 2009 film, literally means what?
Descent
Descent is the literal sense of avatāra, the coming-down of a god into earthly form in times of distress, long before the word meant a screen persona.
Q 11Which state in 2010 became the first in India to make Sanskrit its second official language?
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand moved in 2010, and Himachal Pradesh became the second state to give Sanskrit that status in 2019, each placing it alongside Hindi in official use.
Q 12Sanskrit became an official 'classical language' of India in 2005, a year after which language was first?
Tamil
Tamil won the status in 2004, when the government first set criteria for the label, and Sanskrit followed by a notification dated 25 November 2005.
Q 13Mattur, nicknamed the 'Sanskrit village' because residents converse in it daily, lies in which Indian state?
Karnataka
Karnataka's Mattur sits on the Tunga river near Shivamogga, and its daily Sanskrit took hold in the early 1980s, when the head of Udupi's Pejawar monastery visited and urged villagers to speak it.
Q 21The Mahamrityunjaya mantra, Rigveda 7.59.12, addresses Tryambaka, 'the three-eyed one', an epithet of which god?
Rudra
Rudra, whom Shaivism identifies with Shiva, is asked to free the worshipper from death 'like a cucumber from its stem', the image behind its name, the mantra that conquers death.
Q 22Which chart-topping 1970 George Harrison single has its backing singers chant the Hare Krishna mantra?
My Sweet Lord
My Sweet Lord swaps its backing chant from 'Hallelujah' to 'Hare Krishna' partway through, which Harrison said was meant to show the two mean 'quite the same thing'.
Q 23Which Beatles song's refrain is a Sanskrit mantra hailing Guru Dev, the spiritual master of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?
Across the Universe
Q 14Sudharma, a daily newspaper printed in Sanskrit, was launched in July 1970 in which city?
Mysuru
Mysuru was still called Mysore when scholar Varadaraja Iyengar launched Sudharma, and the paper went out mainly by post after news vendors refused to stock it.
Q 15Through Arabic sifr, which translated Sanskrit śūnya, 'empty', English gained 'zero' and which other word?
Cipher
Cipher also descends from sifr and for centuries simply meant the zero sign, while zero arrived later by way of Italian zero and Medieval Latin zephirum.
Q 16Which Sanskrit phrase, 'the world is one family', was the theme of India's G20 presidency in 2023?
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam comes from the Maha Upanishad and is engraved in the entrance hall of India's Parliament; the G20 logo rendered it as 'One Earth, One Family, One Future'.
Q 17Which English word came through Portuguese and Malay from Sanskrit mantrin, 'an adviser'?
Mandarin
Mandarin passed through Malay menteri and Portuguese mandarim before English applied it to China's imperial officials, and only later to the language they spoke.
Q 18Ashoka's 3rd-century BCE edicts, India's oldest major inscriptions, were mostly in which language, not Sanskrit?
Prakrit
Magadhi Prakrit in the Brahmi script carries the edicts through central and eastern India, and Ashoka called them Dhamma Lipi, 'inscriptions of the Dharma'; Sanskrit prose came later.
Q 19Indonesia's state philosophy, Pancasila, takes its name from two Sanskrit words meaning what?
Five principles
Five principles joins pañca, 'five', to śīla, 'principles' or 'precepts', and Sukarno proposed them in a speech on 1 June 1945 as the basis of an independent Indonesia.
Q 20Which country's coat of arms carries a Sanskrit motto declaring mother and motherland greater than heaven?
Nepal
Nepal prints Jananī Janmabhūmiśca Svargādapi Garīyasī on a red scroll at the base of an emblem that also shows Mount Everest and the joined hands of a man and a woman.
Across the Universe uses the mantra as the link from each verse into its chorus, John Lennon's tribute meaning 'all glory to Guru Dev', the Maharishi's own guru.
Q 24Which 1998 Madonna album includes 'Shanti/Ashtangi', a prayer she sings entirely in Sanskrit?
Ray of Light
Ray of Light's 'Shanti/Ashtangi' sets a shloka from the Yoga Taravali to techno, and after errors in her pronunciation surfaced the BBC arranged phone lessons with scholar Vagish Shastri.
Q 25In which Kalidasa poem does a banished yaksha ask a passing cloud to carry a love message to his wife?
Meghaduta
Meghaduta, 'Cloud Messenger', even has the spirit tell the cloud not to skip Ujjain on its way north to the mythical city of Alaka, detour or not.
Q 26Which German poet wrote a 1791 epigram praising Kalidasa's Sanskrit play Shakuntala?
Goethe
Goethe read the play in Georg Forster's German version of William Jones's translation, and later borrowed a stage convention from its prologue for his own Faust.
Q 27Shudraka's Sanskrit drama about a poor Brahmin and the courtesan Vasantasena is known in English by what title?
The Little Clay Cart
The Little Clay Cart, or Mrichchhakatika, fills its acts with gamblers, thieves and courtesans, and a romanticised French version, Le Chariot d'enfant, played Paris in 1850.
Q 28Which 7th-century emperor of Kannauj is credited with three Sanskrit plays, among them Ratnavali and Nagananda?
Harsha
Harsha's Nagananda tells of the bodhisattva Jimutavahana, who gives his own body to save a serpent prince, and opens with a verse to the Buddha; the third play is Priyadarsika.
Q 29Which Western Satrap ruler had the Junagadh rock cut about 150 CE with the first long inscription in largely standard Sanskrit?
Rudradaman I
Rudradaman I's prose on the Girnar rock traces the waterworks of Sudarshana lake back to Chandragupta Maurya's time, yet breaks the sandhi rules of Sanskrit 'no less than 10 times'.
Q 30Kalhana's 12th-century Rajatarangini, a rare Sanskrit work of history, chronicles the kings of which region?
Kashmir
Kashmir's dynasties fill the metrical chronicle, and a surviving manuscript of it is written in Sharada, a script long used for Sanskrit in the valley.