Question: The five sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) given in this question, when properly sequenced, from a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in this sequence of five numbers as your answer.
The process of handing down implies not a passive transfer, but some contestation in defining what exactly is to be handed down.
Wherever Western scholars have worked on the Indian past, the selection is even more apparent and the inventing of a tradition much more recognizable.
Every generation selects what it requires from the past and makes its innovations, some more than others.
It is now a truism to say that traditions are not handed down unchanged, but are invented.
Just as life has death as its opposite, so is tradition by default the opposite of innovation.
Rather than search for the beginning of the paragraph, you could easily spot the two mandatory pairs in the set of five sentences. “… the selection is even more apparent…” in 2 has to be preceded by “Every generation selects” in 3. So, you can be sure that 3-2 is a mandatory pair. The next mandatory pair that you can see is 5-4. Though there is a mention of life and death in sentence 5, all the other sentences talk about tradition – sentence 5 introduces the idea of tradition and sentence 4 continues with what the writer has to say about tradition – that traditions are opposite of innovation but traditions are also invented. In the discovery of 5-4 as a mandatory pair, you can also understand that 5 introduces the theme and is the best sentence for the starter. Hence, 5-4 is the beginning of the answer sequence. After you find these two mandatory pairs, your only task left is to figure out where to place sentence 1. Sentence 1 is ruled out at the beginning. It can be either at the end or between the two mandatory pairs 5-4 and 3-2. “… traditions are not handed down…” in 4 links to “the process of handing down implies…’ in sentence 1. Hence, 5-4-1 is a sequence which is followed by the mandatory pair 3-2.