Bhanu Datta’s Rasamanjari, the ‘Bouquet of Delight’, was a favourite text of Rajasthani painters. In which language was it written?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Sanskrit
Option (1) Sanskrit — Correct. Rasamanjari was written in Sanskrit; it is a treatise on rasa.
Option (2) Brajbhasha — Incorrect. Brajbhasha is the language of Keshav Das’s Rasikapriya, not of Rasamanjari.
Option (3) Maithili — Incorrect. Bhanu Datta was a Maithil Brahmin of Bihar, but he wrote this text in Sanskrit.
Option (4) Bengali — Incorrect. Bengal is linked with Jayadeva, believed to be court poet of Lakshmana Sen of Bengal. His Gita Govinda is also in Sanskrit, and Rasamanjari is not in Bengali.
Note: This topic was not named in the CUET 2026 syllabus, but it was part of the NCERT chapter. In 2025 and 2026, NTA also asked questions on topics in NCERT that the CUET syllabus did not name. So our mocks have questions from every part of the NCERT chapter, to give you enough practice. Read the whole chapter, not only the sub-topics named in the syllabus.
NCERT (2026-27): “Themes of Paintings – An Overview …Bhanu Datta, a Maithil Brahmin who lived in Bihar in the fourteenth century, composed another favourite text of artists, Rasamanjari, interpreted as the ‘Bouquet of Delight’. Written in Sanskrit, the text is a treatise on rasa and deals with the classification of heroes (nayakas) and heroines (nayikas) in accordance with their age — baal, taruna and praudha; physiognomic traits of appearance, such as padmini, chitrini, shankhini, hastini, etc., and emotional states, such as khandita, vasaksajja, abhisarika, utka, etc.…” |