Everyday Serenity

This amazing structure sits just off the route toward a more prominent tourist attraction, notes Victoria Lautman in the last of her series of articles on India’s stepwells. But as is true of so many of these marvels, Peena Mann ka Kund is more than worth a detour off a well-beaten path.

Beyond providing water throughout the year, India’s subterranean stepwells played other essential roles. For instance, it has always been the chore of women to fetch water, and meeting at the well to socialize or perform prayers would have enlivened their otherwise constrained lives.

The cool interiors of these structures offered refuge from overpowering summer heat for men and women alike, and stepwells built along trade routes offered shady places to rest and linger with their animals.

Another significant purpose of stepwells was as charitable gifts, since commissioning one for the local community was an expensive and visible act of civic patronage for Muslims and Hindus alike. Charity is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and for Hindus, underwriting the construction of a stepwell was on par with building a temple. While the intention might have included a desire to record one’s name for posterity, however, today very few of these patrons or patronesses can be identified.

DESIGN INFLUENCE

Although there is a long tradition of water architecture in the Islamic canon, stepwells were unknown in the Muslim world. When the Mughals encountered them in India, they were so captivated that they protected stepwells from destruction and adopted the form themselves.

In doing so, they added specific Islamic flourishes beginning about 1500, supplanting Hindu post-and-lintel construction with true arches and domes. Octagons, which had symbolic significance to Muslims, also began to appear in stepwell designs, while any figurative details gradually disappeared.

This last shift was the most significant transition from Hindu to Muslin forms. As was mentioned in the first article in this series (click here), the prohibition of figurative representations in Islamic art and architecture was in direct conflict with previously Hindu forms of expression. With this shift, ornamentation became largely geometric along with floral motifs that had significance for both faiths.

Another Muslim development was the emergence of private stepwells, built by royal or wealthy families. Rather than charitable civic commissions, these were set in lush, secluded gardens or within the walls of forts as true leisure retreats for bathing and lounging.

The building of stepwells continued throughout India for roughly 200 years after the Mughals came to power in the 16th Century. But the long heritage began to taper off toward the end of the 18th Century, hastened by the disintegration of the Mughal Empire and the ascendancy of the British East India Company. Nevertheless, there are a few anachronistic stepwells from the early 20th Century; by about 1930, what may be the last of its line was built as a private “folly” within what is now a palace hotel at Wankaner, Gujarat.

During the British Raj, an unknown number of stepwells – thought to be unhealthy incubators of disease – were destroyed or made off limits. (One British official wrote that the water in a particular stepwell was so poisonous that anyone who drank it would die within two hours. The locals, meanwhile, valued that same water for its power to cure skin diseases.) The British had no understanding of how the structures were woven into communities, and thus the symbiotic relationship became untethered.

Still, it was not just a clash of cultures that precipitated the demise of stepwells, but also the march of progress. With the British came alternative methods of procuring water that were clearly preferable to walking up and down a hundred or more steps each day. Hand pumps, village tanks and, eventually, indoor plumbing all negated the most important aspect of a stepwell’s use.

HUMAN SCALE

Years before British rose to power in India, Panna Meena ka Kund – the focus of the third and final part of this series – was built in Jaipur, probably in the late 17th or early 18th Century. It’s within sight of the city’s top tourist destination, Amer Fort, which sits atop a craggy hill eight miles outside the city.

Thousands of tourists visit the fort daily, choosing one of three ways to reach the citadel – walk up, drive up or ride an elephant to the top. (Pachyderm transport is one-way only, however, and the journey down through the narrow streets is made painfully slow by the volume of traffic inching along.) What most people do not know is that these buses and cars pass right by a little oasis as tranquil as the fort is raucous.

Panna Meena is an especially pleasing stepwell, as diminutive and dainty as Chand Baori is a sturdy behemoth. Here, in the shadow of the Aravalli hills, youngsters still swim in the emerald green water (providing guards don’t run them off!), and monkeys cavort up and down the walls. As you move down the steps, jaunty yellow and white hues – remnants of a years-old paint job – infuse the edifice with a sunny disposition enhanced by the lively patterns of stairs and recesses.

The origin of this stepwell is, as is true with so many of these structures, shrouded by questions and open to guesswork. While the timeframes offered above are most commonly accepted, for example, later dates of construction also crop up along with multiple theories about the well’s patron.

The most compelling tale points to Panna Myan, who was by all reports a powerful eunuch in the court of either Raja Bishan Singh, who ruled from 1688 through 1699, or his son, Jaipur’s founder Sawai Jai Singh II, who reigned from 1699 through 1743. It’s unfortunate that no dedication panel exists, because that is the most reliable way to date construction by pinpointing the emperor or local ruler; it might even have identified the donor’s profession had it survived or existed. But at Panna Meena, the facts hardly matter if you are lucky enough to find yourself basking in the sun at water’s edge, feeding fish in the serene pool.

Once stepwells were no longer required for the communal provision of water, their use as temples and shrines also began to decline and there was no longer any reason to maintain them. The result is that any residual respect for them all but disappeared.

TRANSCENDENT VALUE

It was in this social transition that awareness of these incomparable structures fell off history’s radar screen. While a number of stepwells continue to be used as temples or shrines or for washing or irrigation, few are seen in their original context. Some that served ancient villages have been engulfed by a larger metropolis, for example, and are now surrounded by shops and homes.

These stepwells may only be accessible by climbing over walls or peering through windows from above. Other stepwells formerly used as rest stops for travelers may no longer be situated on what was a remote frontier, and still others are so decrepit and filled with trash that their original contours are obscured. Finally, since most stepwells have little above-ground presence, it’s possible to pass one by without even noticing it.

Increasing awareness is the only way these little-known, disappearing marvels will be saved from extinction, and my hope is that my book (see the sidebar just above for information) will help perpetuate a recent groundswell of interest. The more attention stepwells receive, the more tourists will clamor to see them, and perhaps that will help turn the tide.

Even if the progress is slow, I am ever hopeful that these vital contributions to India’s architectural, cultural and social history will finally regain the prominence they deserve.

Victoria Lautman is a Los Angeles-based broadcast journalist, writer and lecturer. Focusing on all forms of art and culture including architecture, design, and literature, she frequently writes and speaks about India. Her book, The Vanishing Stepwells of India, was published by Merrell Publishers (London) in 2017. For more information, visit her website: www.victorialautman.com.