Stepwell

A stepwell, also called a vav or baori, is a well or cistern reached by a long descending corridor of steps carved or built down to the water table, sometimes arranged over multiple stories and, in the largest examples, fitted with a Persian wheel driven by bulls to lift water to the surface. The structures defined subterranean water architecture across western India from roughly the seventh to the nineteenth century, built by digging a deep shaft down to dependable groundwater and lining its walls with dry-set stone before cutting the connecting stairs. The earliest known examples are rock-cut stepwells from around 200 to 400 AD, including a fourth-century example at the Uperkot caves in Junagadh, and Ashokan inscriptions describe wells already being placed at regular intervals along major roads under Emperor Ashoka, who noted the practice already predated his own reign; stepwell construction reached its architectural peak under Muslim rule between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, exemplified by the ornately carved eleventh-century Mata Bhavani stepwell in Gujarat.