RAS question
Fire altars, providing evidence of ritualistic fire worship, have been discovered at which Rajasthan site?
Correct answer: (D) Kalibangan.
Fire altars providing evidence of ritualistic fire worship have been discovered at Kalibangan in Rajasthan.
Explanation
Kalibangan is the Rajasthan site associated with these fire altars. Both the lower town and the citadel of Kalibangan yielded fire altars, linking the site with ritualistic fire worship in the Harappan period. The ASI excavation report supports this reading: it describes a room marked out for ritualistic purpose by the presence of fire altars, records ash and charcoal in the altars showing their association with fire, and rejects the idea that they were ordinary cooking hearths. It also records seven contiguous fire altars in the Citadel area and a similar location in the Lower Town. That combination makes Kalibangan, not another Ahar-Banas or copper-centred site, the correct answer.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) Balathal is not the Kalibangan site where the ASI report documents fire altars; the evidence for ritualistic fire worship points specifically to Kalibangan.
- (B) Ganeshwar is associated with copper objects, whereas the documented evidence for ritual fire altars belongs to Kalibangan.
- (C) Ahar is associated with copper smelting, not with the fire-altars pattern documented at Kalibangan.
Concept
This tests Rajasthan's protohistoric and Harappan archaeology, especially the distinctive finds used to identify major sites. It recurs in RAS because Kalibangan is a high-yield Rajasthan site where urban planning, ritual evidence and Harappan cultural markers converge.