Swami Vivekananda Trivia
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46 free Swami Vivekananda trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Swami Vivekananda packed a remarkable amount into thirty-nine years. A sceptical Calcutta student who doubted his guru's visions became Ramakrishna's chief disciple, walked the length of India as a penniless monk, and in 1893 stood before a Chicago hall with no credentials and five words that brought the room to its feet. He went on to found the Ramakrishna Mission, plant Vedanta societies across America and write the book many scholars treat as the start of modern yoga. These 46 questions follow that life in order: the family and the college principal who first pointed him toward Ramakrishna, the vows taken on an unlikely night, the rock off Kanyakumari, the patrons and professors who got him to Chicago, the disciples he gathered in Europe and America, Belur Math and the monks who built it, Sister Nivedita, his poems and journals, and the airport, train, bridge and national days that carry his name today. Every answer comes with a short explanation that adds a detail beyond the question. Play it on your phone with instant answers, or print it for a school quiz, a Youth Day event or a family round.
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Q 01Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on 12 January 1863 under which name?
Narendranath Datta
Narendranath Datta, Naren at home, was following a family precedent when he took his vows: his grandfather Durgacharan had left his own family to become a monk.
Q 02The 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago where Vivekananda spoke was staged as part of which larger event?
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition was the world's fair Chicago held to mark 400 years since Columbus's voyage, which gave it his name; the Parliament met as one of the congresses attached to it.
Q 03Which greeting opened Vivekananda's 1893 Chicago address, reportedly drawing two minutes' applause?
Sisters and brothers of America
Sisters and brothers of America brought thousands to their feet before he could go on; he then thanked them in the name of 'the most ancient order of monks in the world'.
Q 04Who suggested the name 'Vivekananda' in place of Sachidananda shortly before the monk sailed for America?
The Raja of Khetri
The Raja of Khetri, Ajit Singh, also swapped the monk's lower-class berth for a first-class ticket; the name he suggested joins viveka, discerning wisdom, with ananda, bliss.
Q 05Besides the Bhagavad Gita, which devotional classic of another faith did Vivekananda carry through five years wandering India?
The Imitation of Christ
The Imitation of Christ, the Gita, a staff and a water pot were almost all he carried; he drew parallels between the two books' teachings and wrote a preface to the Imitation.
Q 06The title Paramahamsa borne by Vivekananda's guru Ramakrishna literally means 'supreme' what?
Swan
Swan is the literal sense, a bird said to be equally at home on land and on water, as the true sage is at home in matter and in spirit.
Q 07Vivekananda and eight brother disciples took formal monastic vows at Antpur in 1886 on the day before which festival?
Christmas
Christmas Eve it proved to be: by the Order's own account the young men took their vows before a fire and only afterwards learned the date, one reason its monks still honour Jesus.
Q 08Vivekananda died at Belur Math in 1902, aged 39 as he had foretold, on the date of which American holiday?
Independence Day
Independence Day, the Fourth of July, was the date: four years earlier to the day, travelling in Kashmir with American disciples, he had written them a poem called 'To the Fourth of July'.
Q 09Belur Math, the headquarters Vivekananda established for the Ramakrishna Order, stands on the west bank of which river?
Hooghly
The Hooghly flows past the grounds where Vivekananda placed Ramakrishna's relics on 9 December 1898, the act that founded the Math.
Q 10Vivekananda is said to have swum to a sea rock in December 1892 and meditated there for three days off which town?
Kanyakumari
Kanyakumari, India's southern tip, is where he resolved to cross the ocean and ask the outside world for the means to lift India's poor, the errand that took him to Chicago.
Q 11The Vivekananda Rock Memorial, funded partly through one-rupee folders, stands off which Indian state's coast?
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu, then Madras State, at first said no: its chief minister gave way only after 323 MPs signed in support, and ordinary donors then funded the memorial a rupee at a time.
Q 12Which organiser collected 323 MPs' signatures for the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and went on to found Vivekananda Kendra?
Eknath Ranade
Eknath Ranade, a former RSS general secretary, camped in Delhi on Lal Bahadur Shastri's advice and had the signatures within days to present to the Prime Minister.
Q 13From which port did Vivekananda sail on 31 May 1893, reaching Chicago by way of Japan, China and Canada?
Bombay
Q 21Vivekananda's disciple Sister Nivedita, who opened a Calcutta girls' school in 1898, was born in Ireland as whom?
Margaret Noble
Margaret Noble was a London schoolteacher when she first heard him speak in 1895; without that meeting, she later wrote, her life would have been like 'a headless dream'.
Q 22The name Nivedita, which Vivekananda gave his Irish disciple on 25 March 1898, means what?
Dedicated to God
'Dedicated to God' came with a vow of brahmacharya taken at Nilambar Mukherjee's garden; she went on to nurse plague patients in Calcutta in 1899.
Q 23Which figure, revered by the Ramakrishna Order as Holy Mother, opened Sister Nivedita's school on Kali Puja day in 1898?
Sarada Devi
Bombay was the departure point, with the fare raised by his Madras disciples and several princely patrons, and he reached Chicago on 30 July 1893.
Q 14Which Harvard psychologist, after hearing Vivekananda speak, called him 'simply a wonder for oratorical power'?
William James
William James added that the monk was 'an honor to humanity'; it was Vivekananda's book Raja-Yoga, built on Patanjali's Yoga aphorisms, that had caught the Harvard philosopher's attention.
Q 15Which nickname did American newspapers give Vivekananda in the months after the 1893 Parliament of Religions?
The cyclonic monk
'The cyclonic monk from India' was the press label, and one paper wrote that after hearing him 'we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation'.
Q 16Vivekananda declined a chair of Eastern Philosophy at Harvard and a similar post at which other American university?
Columbia
Columbia and Harvard both offered him academic positions, which he turned down because the duties would conflict with his commitment as a monk.
Q 17In which American city did Vivekananda found the first Vedanta Society in November 1894?
New York
New York's society gained a physical home in January 1895, and Vivekananda later sent his brother-monk Abhedananda to take charge of it.
Q 18Which book collects the private lessons Vivekananda gave a dozen disciples at Thousand Island Park in summer 1895?
Inspired Talks
Inspired Talks was transcribed by Sara Ellen Waldo, who took down weeks of classes held in a cottage one of the students had offered.
Q 19Which thirteen-stanza poem did Vivekananda compose at Thousand Island Park in July 1895?
The Song of the Sannyasin
The Song of the Sannyasin sets out the ideals of the monk's life, and he wrote it the same summer that he initiated two of his Western students at the retreat into monastic vows.
Q 20Which poem did Vivekananda write in a fever in Kashmir in 1898?
Kali the Mother
Kali the Mother hails the goddess in her terrible form, as death and destroyer; the lines seized him so hard that he could not rest until they were down on paper.
Sarada Devi, Ramakrishna's wife, had embraced the Irishwoman as 'khooki', little girl, within weeks of her arrival in Calcutta that January.
Q 24Belur Math's main temple, which blends the architecture of several faiths, has a ground plan shaped like which symbol?
A cross
A cross is the plan the engineer-monk Vijnanananda drew to Vivekananda's directions, its sanctum joined to a congregational hall as in a church, which its builders say older temples lacked.
Q 25In 1897, the year Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission, one of his brother monks ran relief for victims of what?
Famine
Famine was already at hand: that same year Swami Akhandananda went to Murshidabad in Bengal to feed and nurse the starving, putting the new Mission's ideal of service straight to work.
Q 26Which creature on the emblem of Vivekananda's Ramakrishna Mission stands for yoga and the awakened kundalini?
A serpent
A serpent plays that part in an emblem Vivekananda designed himself, in which waters, a lotus and a rising sun stand for work, devotion and knowledge, and a bird for the Supreme Self.
Q 27Which disciple of Ramakrishna, born Rakhal Chandra Ghosh, became the first president of the Order Vivekananda organised?
Swami Brahmananda
Swami Brahmananda was the boy Ramakrishna greeted as the spiritual son he had already seen in a vision, and he went on to head the Order until his death in 1922.
Q 28Which English couple who followed Vivekananda home from England founded the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati in 1899?
The Seviers
The Seviers, Captain James and Charlotte, set up a Himalayan ashram where, at Vivekananda's wish, no images are worshipped, not even of Ramakrishna.
Q 29Which English monthly of the Ramakrishna Order was begun in Madras in 1896 at Vivekananda's behest?
Prabuddha Bharata
Prabuddha Bharata, 'Awakened India', stopped when its young first editor died in 1898; Vivekananda had it restarted from Almora in the Himalayas and wrote a poem to greet its return.
Q 30Ramakrishna, Vivekananda's guru, died in August 1886 at a garden house in Cossipore after developing which illness?
Throat cancer
Throat cancer was diagnosed in 1885, and the disciples who nursed him at Cossipore received ochre robes from him, forming his first monastic order.