Art & Culture Quiz: Stepwells, Tanks and Water Architecture of India

Rani ki Vav stands on the bank of the Saraswati at Patan, the old Solanki capital called Anhilwad Patan, and was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2014 for its seven storeys of sculpture in the Maru-Gurjara style.

Queen Udayamati had the stepwell built in the eleventh century in memory of her husband Bhimdev I of the Solanki or Chaulukya dynasty of Gujarat, which is why it is described as a memorial in the form of an inverted temple.

The reverse of the one hundred rupee note of the Mahatma Gandhi new series carries the motif of Rani ki Vav at Patan, chosen because it is a World Heritage Site that stands for Indian water architecture.

Chand Baori is at Abhaneri in Dausa district of Rajasthan, opposite the Harshat Mata temple, and is attributed to King Chanda of the Nikumbha house in about the ninth century; its criss-cross flights descending thirteen storeys make it one of the deepest stepwells in India.

In Karnataka and the Deccan the stepped tank built beside a temple for ritual bathing is called a kalyani or a pushkarni, and the stepped tank at Hampi, built of fitted stone blocks, is the best known example.

Dholavira, on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch, had no perennial river, so its builders dammed the Manhar and Mansar streams and cut a series of large reservoirs inside the walled town, the most advanced water engineering known from the Harappan civilisation.

The Kallanai, known in English as the Grand Anicut, is a dam of unhewn stone laid across the Kaveri in the Thanjavur region and is credited to the early Chola king Karikala; it still spreads the river water over the delta.

Adalaj ni Vav stands at Adalaj in Gandhinagar district and was completed in 1499 during the reign of Mahmud Begada; its carving mixes Hindu motifs with Islamic geometric and floral work, and the queen Rudabai is remembered in its story.

Both lie in the Mehrauli area of Delhi; Gandhak ki Baoli, from the time of Iltutmish, takes its name from the sulphurous smell of its water, and Rajon ki Baoli belongs to the Lodi period and is named after the masons who once used it.

A tanka is a covered underground cistern, usually circular, dug in the courtyard of a house or in a public square in western Rajasthan, into which rain from the roof or a paved catchment is led and stored for drinking through the dry months.

In south Bihar the pyne is a diversion channel that takes flood water from a river, and the ahar is a catchment basin with embankments on three sides in which that water is stored for the rice crop, a system suited to the region hard soil and uneven rainfall.

Bundi, in the Hadoti region, has dozens of baoris and is therefore called the city of stepwells; the grandest is Rani ji ki Baori, built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati, with a high arched gate and carved elephant brackets.