Vishnu Trivia
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49 free Vishnu trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Vishnu is the Preserver of the Hindu Trimurti and the supreme god of Vaishnavism, and this quiz covers him from his handful of Rigvedic hymns to the largest religious monument on Earth. It opens with the iconography: the blue skin, the four arms and what each holds, the Kaustubha gem, the serpent Shesha he sleeps on in the Ocean of Milk, his mount Garuda, his consort Lakshmi and his abode Vaikuntha. The heart of the quiz is the Dashavatara. Every one of the ten avatars gets its due: Matsya and the flood, Kurma beneath Mount Mandara, Varaha lifting the earth on his tusks, Narasimha and the loophole in Hiranyakashipu's boon, Vamana's three steps, Parashurama and his axe, Rama, Krishna, the disputed ninth seat shared by the Buddha and Balarama, and Kalki still to come on a white horse. It finishes with the places and practices built around him: the thousand names, Ekadashi fasting, Jagannath's chariots, the seven hills of Tirupati, the vaults of Padmanabhaswamy and Angkor Wat. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a Vishnu image; the expert tier is for students of Hindu texts. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Vishnu, his avatars, attributes and temples, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Within the Hindu Trimurti, Vishnu is known by which title?
The Preserver
The Preserver: Brahma creates and Shiva destroys, while Vishnu's task is to step in whenever evil gains the upper hand and restore the balance.
Q 02Shaligrams, the spiral-marked black stones worshipped as natural forms of Vishnu, are the fossils of which sea creatures?
Ammonites
Ammonites: these squid relatives lived in the long-vanished Tethys sea, and Nepal's Kali Gandaki river now washes their coiled shells out of Himalayan rock.
Q 03Vishnu's skin is traditionally shown in which colour?
Dark blue
Dark blue: the old texts liken his colour to a rain-heavy cloud, and the name Ghanashyam means 'dark as a cloud'.
Q 04What is the name of Vishnu's conch, blown as the Bhagavad Gita opens?
Panchajanya
Panchajanya: the name comes from Panchajana, a demon said to have lived inside the shell until Vishnu killed him and kept his home as a war trumpet.
Q 05The Sudarshana Chakra held by Vishnu is what kind of weapon?
A spinning discus
A spinning discus: in one telling the gods' craftsman shaved off some of the Sun's unbearable glare and forged this weapon, and Shiva's trident, from the filings.
Q 06Kaumodaki, one of the four objects Vishnu holds in his hands, is what?
A mace
A mace: some sculptors show it as a woman, Gadadevi, standing at Vishnu's side with his hand resting on her head.
Q 07Which flower does Vishnu hold in one of his four hands?
Lotus
Lotus: it opens spotless above the muddy water it grows from, which made it India's emblem of purity and of a soul rising free of the world.
Q 08Which gem from the churning of the ocean does Vishnu wear on his chest?
Kaustubha
Kaustubha: it floated up with the other treasures as gods and demons churned for the nectar of immortality, and in one reading it stands for every living soul, carried on Vishnu's chest.
Q 09Vishnu is traditionally shown reclining on the coils of which serpent?
Shesha
Shesha: the name means 'what remains', because he alone is left, unchanged, each time the universe dissolves at the end of an age.
Q 10Vishnu's serpent is believed to have incarnated on Earth as Lakshmana and as which brother of Krishna?
Balarama
Balarama: legend says he was conceived by Krishna's imprisoned mother, then moved as an embryo into another wife's womb to save him from a murderous king.
Q 11What is the name of Vishnu's mount, the king of birds?
Garuda
Garuda: in his best-known tale he raids heaven for the gods' nectar of immortality, the ransom demanded to free his mother from the mother of all snakes.
Q 12Vishnu's bird mount is the national emblem of Thailand and of which Muslim-majority country?
Indonesia
Indonesia: the Hindu eagle stayed on as a legacy of the islands' old Hindu kingdoms, and the country named its national airline after him too.
Q 13Who is Vishnu's consort, the goddess of wealth and fortune?
Lakshmi
Lakshmi: on Diwali night families set rows of oil lamps in their windows and doorways to help her find her way into their homes.
Q 21In later versions of the legend, Matsya slays which demon for stealing the Vedas?
Hayagriva
Hayagriva: confusingly, the same name also belongs to a horse-headed form of Vishnu who, in other tellings, wins the stolen Vedas back himself.
Q 22As Kurma the tortoise, Vishnu bore the weight of which mountain during the churning of the ocean?
Mandara
Mandara: gods and demons spun the mountain as a giant churning rod, with a serpent for a rope, and the tortoise's shell was the base that held it up.
Q 23How did Varaha, the boar avatar, carry the earth out of the cosmic ocean?
Between his tusks
Between his tusks: temple sculptors love the moment, carving the rescued earth as a small goddess clinging to the tusk of a towering boar-headed figure.
Q 14In one popular image type, Vishnu's consort is shown flanked by two of which animal?
Elephants
Elephants: the pair bathe her with water poured from their trunks, an image of royal good fortune that ancient Indian rulers stamped on their seals.
Q 15What is the name of Vishnu's heavenly abode?
Vaikuntha
Vaikuntha: devotees hope to arrive there after death, since souls who reach it are said to stay for good, free at last from the cycle of rebirth.
Q 16Which gatekeepers of Vishnu's heavenly abode were cursed to be reborn as his enemies?
Jaya and Vijaya
Jaya and Vijaya: they turned a group of sages away from the gate, and the curse that followed cast them as the demon kings Vishnu's avatars came down to kill.
Q 17Which god has the most hymns in the Rigveda, where Vishnu is a minor figure?
Indra
Indra: about a quarter of the hymns go to the thunderbolt-wielding king of the gods, yet it was the minor Vishnu who later rose to be one of Hinduism's supreme deities.
Q 18The Vishnu Sahasranama, recited in the Mahabharata's Anushasana Parva, lists how many names of Vishnu?
1,000
1,000: in the epic they are recited by a dying warrior lying on a bed of arrows, as his answer to a king who asks which prayer can free a person from rebirth.
Q 19During Chaturmas, the four monsoon months when Hindu weddings are traditionally put on hold, Vishnu is believed to be doing what?
Sleeping
Sleeping: he is said to slumber through the rains, and the autumn day he wakes opens the Hindu wedding season.
Q 20Matsya, usually counted as the first avatar, took what form to rescue Manu from the great flood?
A fish
A fish: the tiny creature Manu rescued outgrew every vessel he put it in until only the sea could hold it, then came back to bring his boat safely through the flood.
Q 24Narasimha, the man-lion avatar, killed which demon king, whose own young son was a devotee of Vishnu?
Hiranyakashipu
Hiranyakashipu: his sister Holika tried to burn the boy on a pyre and died in the flames herself, the story behind the bonfires lit on the eve of Holi.
Q 25To get around the demon's boon, Narasimha killed him at twilight, on his lap, using his claws, and where?
On a palace threshold
On a palace threshold: the boon ruled out death indoors or outdoors, and a doorway is neither, just as dusk is neither day nor night and claws are no weapon.
Q 26The dwarf avatar Vamana asked the king Bali for how much land?
Three paces
Three paces: a bargain, the king thought, until the dwarf's strides spanned earth and sky; in one telling the third lands on the king's own bowed head.
Q 27King Bali was the grandson of which child devotee, saved from his father by the man-lion avatar?
Prahlada
Prahlada: the grandson's tale ends kindly too, since in one telling he may visit his old kingdom once a year, a homecoming celebrated as the harvest festival Onam.
Q 28The sixth avatar, Parashurama, is named for which weapon that he carries?
An axe
An axe: parashu is Sanskrit for a battle-axe, so his name means 'Rama with the axe', and legend has him turn it on the warrior kings to avenge his father's murder.
Q 29In legend, what happened when the warrior avatar Parashurama hurled his weapon out over the Arabian Sea?
The sea drew back
The sea drew back: the water is said to have retreated as far as the weapon flew, and the strip of India's south-west coast it gave up is nicknamed Parashurama's land.
Q 30In the Mahabharata, Parashurama was the guru of Drona, Karna and which grand old warrior?
Bhishma
Bhishma: teacher and pupil later met in battle over a wronged princess, a duel that raged for days until gods and ancestors begged both men to stop.