Rani ki Vav, the Patan Stepwell With Over 500 Principal Sculptures, Won UNESCO World Heritage Status on 22 June 2014 and Is on the Rs 100 Note

On 22 June 2014 the Ministry of Culture announced that Rani ki Vav, an 11th century stepwell in Patan, north Gujarat, had been approved for the UNESCO World Heritage List by the Committee meeting in Doha. UNESCO’s text describes a water system divided into seven levels of stairs, carrying more than 500 principal sculptures and over a thousand minor ones. In July 2018 the Reserve Bank announced a new Rs 100 note with the stepwell as the motif on its reverse.

A stepwell, called a vav in Gujarat, is a well reached by a stepped corridor that runs down to the water. According to the Ministry’s release, Rani ki Vav is the most developed, elaborate and ornate example of its type and marks the zenith in the evolution of stepwells in India.

What the World Heritage Committee wrote

Decision 38 COM 8B.25 inscribes the property under two criteria. Under criterion (i) the Committee says the stepwell “illustrates an example of the artistic and technological height of stepwell tradition” and calls it a monument of human creative genius in its variety of motifs and elegance of proportions. Criterion (iv) gets different wording: “an outstanding example of a subterranean stepwell construction” and a prime example of a water storage type found across the Indian subcontinent.

The same text says the functional well was combined with a temple-like structure that celebrates the sanctity of water, and its brief synthesis describes the whole as an inverted temple. The Ministry of Culture’s release of 22 June 2014 calls the inscription “a testimony to the traditional water systems of India”. It adds that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) nominated the site in February 2013 with an in-house team, and that Gujarat’s government backed protection of the surrounding buffer zone in the city’s Development Plan.

A queen’s memorial from the Solanki period

UNESCO says the stepwell was “initially built as a memorial in the 11th century CE” and names neither a builder nor a year. Other sources fill that in. The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture, records the tradition that Queen Udayamati, wife of King Bhimadeva I, had it built, and gives his reign as 1022 to 1063. Kirit Mankodi, an archaeologist writing for Sahapedia, dates it to the third quarter of the 11th century and calls it a memorial to Bhimadeva, who also built the Sun temple at Modhera.

Mankodi adds that the chronicler Merutunga, in the Prabandhacintamani of 1306, attributes the stepwell to Udayamati after her husband died in 1064, and that a later marble portrait of the queen carries her name. Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism’s portal, gives 1063 as the year of the commission and says Merutunga’s account has the work taking about two decades. Sanskriti magazine places construction in the last quarter of the 11th century, so the year is not settled. Patan was then the Solanki capital and lies about 125 km north of Ahmedabad.

Seven levels, four pavilions, one deep well

The monument faces east. UNESCO lists its parts: a stepped corridor that starts at ground level, four pavilions that gain storeys toward the west, a tank, and a well in the form of a tunnel shaft. From the lost ornamental arch at the entrance to the far side of the well, Mankodi measures about 65 metres. The IGNCA gives 64 metres by 20 metres with a shaft 27 metres deep, while Mankodi puts the well at more than 28 metres deep and 10 metres across at the top.

Seven storeys were there originally, and five survive, according to both Mankodi and the IGNCA. Of 292 pillars in the pavilions, 226 still stand. Mankodi writes that the stone walls visible today are only 45 centimetres thick, a veneer over a hidden brick backing that takes the pressure of the soil. The Sarasvati river ran about 500 metres to the north and fed the well, and a masonry tank of 7 by 6 metres took its surplus. That tank is the largest reservoir of any Gujarat stepwell, he says.

Ten avatars, celestial women and Vishnu on the water

Central to the carving, the IGNCA says, are the Dashavatara, the ten incarnations of Vishnu. Seven are found in the niches today, Mankodi lists: Varaha, Vamana, Rama, Balarama, Parashurama, the Buddha and Kalki. The Narasimha niche is empty. Among the nearly 400 niches, Vishnu and Parvati appear more often than any other deity, and apsaras, celestial women, stand on the projecting pillared panels between them.

A reclining Vishnu on the serpent Shesha sits at water level, placed so that the surface of the reservoir becomes part of the scene. On the high reservoir walls, per Mankodi, are the 24 forms of Vishnu and the 12 Gauris, forms of Parvati.

Counts of the carvings vary with the source. UNESCO gives more than 500 principal sculptures and over a thousand minor ones. Mankodi counts about 400 large images today against at least 800 planned, the IGNCA says nearly 400 survive from an estimated 800, and Incredible India says more than 800.

Under silt for about seven centuries

According to UNESCO’s text, the stepwell stopped working as a water source when the Sarasvati disappeared through a geo-tectonic movement, and silt from the flood that followed preserved it for over seven centuries. The Committee dates the flooding and silting to the 13th century and says the structure does not seem to have suffered major losses since. The Ministry’s release gives the same sequence and credits the ASI with the state of conservation.

Mankodi gives a longer account of the damage. Repeated floods brought down the upper parts, and in the early 19th century a landowner carted off collapsed pillars of the upper storeys for a new stepwell in Patan, the Barot Vav. Henry Cousens and James Burgess saw only a few pillars and the well shaft in the late 19th century, Incredible India says, and the site was rediscovered in the 1940s. Sanskriti magazine dates the start of the ASI’s excavation to 1958. Since the 1980s, writes Mankodi, the ASI has desilted the monument, realigned the walls and reset the surviving sculptures. Incredible India also puts the ASI’s extensive restoration in that decade.

On the repairs, UNESCO’s authenticity assessment says rebuilt elements went in only where needed to protect the remaining sculpture, and their smooth, undecorated surfaces make them easy to tell from the original stone. The ASI has documented the stepwell digitally with CyArk and the Scottish Ten, the Ministry says. Its release adds that the ASI holds the excavated part of the Sahastralinga Talao, a historic reservoir beside the stepwell, and that Gujarat worked with the ASI to mark both its excavated and unexcavated parts for protection in the Development Plan.

On the Rs 100 note and in the cleanliness rankings

The Reserve Bank’s release of 19 July 2018 announced the Rs 100 note in the Mahatma Gandhi (New) Series, signed by Governor Urjit R. Patel. Rani ki Vav is named as the motif on the reverse, depicting the country’s cultural heritage, with lavender as the base colour and a size of 66 mm by 142 mm. Earlier Rs 100 notes stay legal tender. For how the bank is set up, see our explainer on the Reserve Bank and the rupee.

A January 2019 summary from the Ministry of Culture says 25 ASI sites were launched as Adarsh Smarak, or model monuments, on 26 December 2014, and that the ASI ranked them on cleanliness: toilets, green lawns, polythene-free zones, awareness signs, access for disabled visitors, drinking water and garbage bins. Rani ki Vav, it says, was declared the cleanest iconic place in the country. The Patan district administration dates the honour to the Indian Sanitation Conference in New Delhi in 2016 and gives the title as Cleanest Iconic Place. India Water Portal’s report from that conference, updated on 4 October 2016, words it as the cleanest iconic monument.

How it compares with Adalaj and Dada Harir ni Vav

Of Gujarat’s stepwells, Mankodi calls Rani ki Vav one of the largest and says its sculptural wealth surpasses all others. The UCLA Center for India and South Asia describes it as probably the most magnificent in the state, with Hindu deities and alluring maidens on the walls beside the staircase. Adalaj and Dada Harir ni Vav both date from the reign of Sultan Mahmud Begada, more than four centuries later.

Adalaj, near Gandhinagar, was begun in 1498, Incredible India says. Five storeys deep and built in the Solanki style, it mixes Hindu, Jain and Islamic motifs and has an octagonal opening that lets light and air down. The same page says Rana Veer Singh of the Vaghela dynasty began it and that his kingdom fell to Sultan Mahmud Begada before it was finished. UCLA adds that the octagonal well and the receding rows of columns and cross-beams are especially striking.

Dada Harir ni Vav stands at Asarwa, about 15 km from central Ahmedabad. A Sanskrit inscription dates it to December 1499 in Mahmud Shah’s reign and records a cost of 3,29,000 Mahmudis, which Incredible India puts at roughly Rs 3 lakh at the time. A Persian inscription credits Dhai Harir, a lady of Begada’s household, and the name later shifted to Dada Harir. UCLA says it follows the earlier Mata Bhavani vav at Ahmedabad and has no figures at all, the opposite of Patan’s carved walls. Together with Adalaj, UCLA names it among the finest stepwells of the Muslim period.

Gujarat’s other UNESCO-listed water story is told in our piece on Dholavira, and the state’s wider profile is in Gujarat at a glance.

What UNESCO asked the ASI to do next

Because Rani ki Vav lies in an earthquake-prone area, the Committee recommends a risk preparedness plan with stabilisation measures. It also asks for measurable monitoring indicators, one database linking survey records to photographs and maps of the sculptures, a Heritage Impact Assessment before the planned visitor centre is built, and stronger visitor management. Patan’s western growth toward the stepwell has to be controlled, the text says.

As a national monument the property is protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites Act of 1958, as amended in 2010. A zone where building is barred extends 100 metres on all sides, and the ASI’s management plan began to be implemented in 2013.