stepwell

stepwell, subterranean edifice and water source, an architectural form that was long popular throughout India but particularly in arid regions of the Indian subcontinent. For centuries, stepwells—which incorporated a cylinder well that extended down to the water table—provided water for drinking, washing, bathing, and the irrigation of crops. They also served as cool sanctuaries for caravans, pilgrims, and other travelers during the heat of day or overnight. Commissioned by royal, wealthy, or powerful patrons, they were complex engineering feats and stunning examples of both Hindu and Islamic architecture.

Stepwells were excavated several stories underground in order to reach the water table, the level at which the soil or rock is always saturated with water. Stylistically varied, they incorporated flights of stairs leading from the ground level down to the water, and many in what is now the western state of Gujarat also functioned as Hindu temples that featured column-supported shade pavilions and elaborate stone carvings. Islamic versions had more-sedate adornment and often incorporated arched side-niches. Both architectural types had cylinder wells where water-gathering pulley systems were sometimes employed.

Of the thousands of stepwells that proliferated throughout India, most were abandoned as a result of modernization and falling water tables. Local communities neglected their upkeep, thus allowing them to silt up, fill with garbage, or generally crumble into ruin. During the period of British rule (1858–1947), many stepwells were destroyed after they had been deemed unhygienic breeding grounds for disease. Present-day India’s water crisis, however, has renewed interest in stepwells, and the government has begun to preserve some of them.

Origins and major sites

Rudimentary stepwells first appeared in India in the 3rd century ce, born of necessity in a capricious monsoonal climate zone that is bone-dry for much of the year yet drenched by torrential rains for many weeks. It was essential to guarantee a year-round water supply for human needs, particularly in the arid regions of northwestern India where the water table could be inconveniently buried 10 stories underground. Over the centuries, stepwell design evolved into astoundingly complex structures.

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Construction of a stepwell typically involved not just boring a deep hole from which water could be drawn but the careful placement of a wide, stone-lined, sloping excavation that, once a long staircase and side ledges had been embedded, allowed access to the ever-fluctuating level of the water, which flowed through an opening in the well cylinder. In dry seasons the steps—which could number more than a hundred—had to be negotiated to reach the bottom story. During the rainy season, however, a parallel function kicked in, and the trench was transformed into a large cistern that filled to capacity and submerged the steps sometimes to the surface of the land. That ingenious system for water preservation continued for a millennium.

In many wells—particularly those in what is now Gujarat—each successive level was punctuated by covered pavilions, which were accessed by ledges as the water level rose and which provided vital shade while buttressing the walls against intense pressure. Many stepwells gradually narrowed from the surface to the lowest tier underground, where the temperature was refreshingly cool. By building underground rather than above, a sort of reverse architecture was created, and, since many stepwells have little presence above the surface other than a low masonry wall, a sudden encounter with one of those vertiginous man-made chasms could generate a sense of both surprise and total dislocation once inside, where the telescoping views, towering pavilions, and powerful play of light and shadow could be equally disorienting.

Scholars have estimated that by the 19th century several thousand stepwells in varying degrees of grandeur had been built throughout India—in cities, villages, and eventually in private gardens, where they were known as “retreat wells.” Stepwells also proliferated along crucial remote trade routes, where travelers and pilgrims could park their animals and take shelter in covered arcades. They were the ultimate public monuments, available to both genders and every religion—seemingly anyone at all but for the lowest-caste Hindu. It was considered extremely meritorious to commission a stepwell, an earthbound bastion against eternity, and it is believed that one-fourth of those wealthy or powerful philanthropists were female. Considering that fetching water was (and still is) a task assigned to women, the stepwells would have provided a reprieve in otherwise regimented lives, and gathering down in the village stepwell was surely an important social activity.

Stepwells are categorized by their scale, layout, materials, and shape: they can be rectangular, circular, or even L-shaped; they can be built from masonry, rubble, or brick; and they can have as many as four separate entrances. No two stepwells are identical, and each—whether it is simple and utilitarian or complex and ornamented—has a unique character. Much depends on where, when, and by whom they were commissioned.

Hindu structures functioned as bona fide subterranean temples, replete with carved images of the male and female deities to whom the stepwells were dedicated. Those sculptures formed a spiritual backdrop for ritual bathing, prayers, and offerings that played an important role in many Hindu stepwells, and, despite a lack of accessible groundwater, a number continue today as active temples—e.g., the 11th-century Mata Bhavani Vav in Ahmadabad (Ahmedabad; east-central Gujarat).

Nowhere was there a more-elaborate backdrop for worship planned than at India’s best-known stepwell, the Rani ki Vav (“Queen’s Stepwell”) in Patan (northern Gujarat), commissioned by Queen Udayamati about 1060 to commemorate her deceased spouse. Its enormous scale—210 feet (64 metres) long and 65 feet (20 metres) wide—probably contributed to the disastrous flooding that buried the almost-finished stepwell for nearly a thousand years under sand and mud. The builders of the structure realized that they were attempting something risky and added extra buttressing and massive support walls but to no avail. In the 1980s the excavation and restoration of the Rani ki Vav were completed, but by then the long-exposed columns on the first tier had been hauled off to build the nearby 18th-century Bahadur Singh ki Vav (now completely surrounded by homes). The Rani ki Vav was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014.

Once Muslim rulers began to dominate in India, starting about the late 12th century, stepwells shifted in their design both structurally and decoratively. Whereas Hindu builders used trabeated (post-and-lintel) construction with corbel domes, Muslims introduced the arch and the “true” dome. Hindu artists carved sculptures and friezes packed with deities, humans, and animals, but Islam forbade depictions of any creatures at all. When the two traditions collided for a brief period in Gujarat about 1500, a pair of brilliant offspring resulted close to the new capital of Ahmadabad—the Rudabai Vav and the Dada Harir Vav. Both are five stories deep with octagonal subterranean pools, each commissioned by a female patron. Although the Rudabai Vav boasts three separate entrances (a rarity), it and the Dada Harir Vav are conceptual cousins, built virtually simultaneously just 12 miles (19 km) from one another and commissioned under Islamic authority using Hindu artisans. Each is elaborately decorated but with a notable absence of deities and human figures. Compared with other, more-sombre Islamic-commissioned stepwells, those two examples are flamboyant.