Official Solution:
Instead of accepting the throne of Kapilavastu, Lord Buddha went along the path of complete awareness to see if he could achieve a state of enlightenment, guided by his inner instincts.
A. Instead of accepting the throne of Kapilavastu, Lord Buddha went along the path of complete awareness to see if he could achieve a state of enlightenment, guided by his inner instincts.
B. Rather than accepting the throne of Kapilavastu, Lord Buddha was guided by his inner instincts and went to see whether he could achieve a state of enlightenment by going along the path of complete awareness.
C. Instead of accepting the throne of Kapilavastu, Lord Buddha was guided along the path of complete awareness by his inner instincts and went to see whether he could achieve a state of complete awareness.
D. Rather than accept the throne of Kapilavastu, Lord Buddha, guided by his inner instincts, went along the path of complete awareness to see whether he could achieve a state of enlightenment.
E. Rather than accept the throne of Kapilavastu, Lord Buddha, who was guided by his inner instincts, went to see whether he could achieve a state of enlightenment by going along the path of complete awareness.
A. In the structure “X instead of Y”, X and Y must be parallel. Here X = “accepting”, a gerund, whereas Y = “went”, a verb. Thus parallelism is violated. Moreover “instead of” is used to mark parallelism between two nouns, whereas “rather than” is more versatile and can be used to mark parallelism between two nouns, verbs, verbals (gerunds, participles etc.), prepositional phrases etc.
The usage of “if” is wrong - “If” is used to depict a condition. For depicting a choice, “whether” is more suitable.
The placement of the modifier “guided by his inner instincts” is wrong - it is too far away from the modified noun “Buddha”.
B. In the structure “X rather than Y”, X and Y must be parallel. Here X = “accepting”, a gerund, whereas Y = “was guided”, a verb. Thus parallelism is violated.
The verbs “was guided” and “went” are joined by the conjunction “and”, wrongly implying that these two actions are independent - thus the meaning is distorted and the bearing between the actions is lost.
C. In the structure “X instead of Y”, X and Y must be parallel. Here X = “accepting”, a gerund, whereas Y = “was guided”, a verb. Thus parallelism is violated. Moreover “instead of” is used to mark parallelism between two nouns, whereas “rather than” is more versatile and can be used to mark parallelism between two nouns, verbs, verbals (gerunds, participles etc.), prepositional phrases etc.
The verbs “was guided” and “went” are joined by the conjunction “and”, wrongly implying that these two actions are independent - thus the meaning is distorted and the bearing between the actions is lost.
D. CORRECT. In the structure “X instead of Y”, X and Y must be parallel. Here X = “accept”, a verb, and Y = “went”, also a verb. Thus parallelism is maintained. Questions may arise why the tenses of the verbs are not the same - for maintaining parallelism, the tenses of the verbs need not be the same. Moreover although the action “accept” occurred in the past, it is stylistically accepted to use the base form “accept” after “rather than''.
Past participle modifier “guided by his inner instinct” is correctly positioned, touching the modified noun “Buddha”.
E. The action “go“ has been depicted twice, hence redundant - “went to see… by going along the path”.
Because of the usage of the relative clause “..who was guided…”, the bearing between the actions “was guided” and “went” is lost.
Answer: D
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