"India’s Underground Water Temples" (article by Samir S. Patel)

Last month’s issue of Archaeology (May/June 2011:36-39) features a story about a recent effort to record the ancient underground wells of India by a team of researchers from Historic Scotland.  These wells, originally built between 200 and 1200 AD, are really underground temples. Many of them are still richly adorned with Hindu gods and goddesses, like their counterparts constructed above ground.  Long stairways lead from the surface entrance down to the water table deep below.  Several landings along the descent provide gathering places for people, where they can enjoy both the coolness of the air and the soft sunlight, as it filters down from the opening above.  These shaft, or step, wells provided water for successive generations, in a land that often experiences water shortages between the monsoon seasons.  The later Mughal rulers continued to construct step wells and to repair the older ones, substituting Islam’s geometric patterns and calligraphic lines for the earlier Hindu figural decoration.  The step wells only lost their utility in the 19^th century, when the English closed them down for fear of contamination.   As a consequence, these beautiful and beneficial wells were all but forgotten, until Historic Scotland’s team decided to conduct a detailed laser scan of numerous examples in order to “help monitor erosion of the delicate carvings, elucidate the well’s hydrology, and provide glimpses of its deepest recesses.”

An excerpt of the article can be found at: http://www.archaeology.org/1105/features/india_gujarat_stepwells_ran_ki_vav.html

Or check out 399 of the laser photos of these wells at: at:http://www.flickr.com/photos/historicscotland/4971304356/in/photostream/