Temples, Stepwells and Architecture of Rajasthan: Key Facts

Rajasthan built in stone because stone was what the land gave it, and the state's temples, stepwells, cenotaphs and merchant mansions are examined as one chapter in RPSC, RSMSSB and SSC papers. The questions are always of the same four kinds: which monument stands in which district, who built it and in whose reign, which deity or family it belongs to, and which single feature it is famous for. The forts and palaces are a separate chapter; this one deals with everything else the Rajput courts, the Jain merchants and the village communities raised, and with the water architecture that an arid land made necessary.

Temple architecture and its idiom

Rajasthan's temples belong to the Nagara family of north Indian architecture, with a curved shikhara over the sanctum and a pillared hall in front. From about the eleventh century the state's builders worked in the Maru Gurjara idiom, shared with Gujarat, whose marks are white marble or light sandstone, deeply undercut carving, ceilings cut into concentric rings of figures, and ornamental arches called toranas between the pillars of the hall. The older temples of the eighth to the twelfth century, at Osian in Jodhpur district, Kiradu in Barmer, Baroli in Chittorgarh, Harshnath in Sikar and Jagat near Udaipur, show the earlier sandstone phase; the temple at Jagat is called the Khajuraho of Mewar for its sculpture, and the group at Osian is often described in the same way.

The temples examiners ask about

• Dilwara Jain temples, Mount Abu, Sirohi district: a group of five marble temples. The Vimal Vasahi, dedicated to Adinath, was built in 1031 by Vimal Shah, a minister of the Solanki ruler of Gujarat; the Luna Vasahi, dedicated to Neminath, was built in 1230 by the brothers Vastupala and Tejpala. The carving of the ceilings and the lotus pendants is the finest marble work in India.
• Ranakpur, Pali district: the Chaumukha temple of Adinath, built in the fifteenth century in the reign of Maharana Kumbha by the merchant Dharna Shah, famous for its 1,444 carved pillars, no two of which are alike.
• Eklingji, Kailashpuri near Udaipur: the four-faced black marble Shiva who is the tutelary deity of the rulers of Mewar, who styled themselves his regents.
• Shrinathji, Nathdwara, Rajsamand district: the chief shrine of the Pushtimarg sect of Vallabhacharya, where the image of Krishna brought from Vrindavan was installed in 1672 in the reign of Maharana Raj Singh I.
• Brahma temple, Pushkar, Ajmer district: one of the very few temples in India dedicated to Brahma, standing beside the Pushkar lake.
• Jagdish temple, Udaipur: a tall Vishnu temple built in 1651 by Maharana Jagat Singh I, just outside the City Palace.
• Karni Mata temple, Deshnok, Bikaner district: the shrine of the family deity of the Rathores of Bikaner, known for the rats that live in it.
• Other well-known shrines: Khatu Shyamji in Sikar, Salasar Balaji in Churu, Mehandipur Balaji in Dausa, Sanwaliya Ji in Chittorgarh and the Govind Dev Ji temple in the City Palace at Jaipur.

Water architecture: baoris, kunds and jhalaras

Rainfall in western Rajasthan is both small and uncertain, so the state developed a whole grammar of water structures, and every form has its own name. A baori or bawri is a stepwell, a shaft reached by flights of steps on one or more sides, so that water can be drawn at any level as it falls through the year. A kund is a saucer shaped catchment with a covered well at its centre. A jhalara is a stepped tank fed by seepage from a lake or a canal above it. A nadi is a village pond, a johad a check dam across a small drainage, a tanka a covered underground cistern that stores roof runoff, and a khadin a field embankment that holds runoff for a crop. These were built by rulers, by queens, by merchants and by villages, and they were social spaces as much as water sources.

• Chand Baori, Abhaneri, Dausa district: the most photographed stepwell in India, attributed to King Chanda of the Nikumbh line in about the ninth century, thirteen storeys deep with some three thousand five hundred narrow steps arranged in a double criss cross, with the Harshat Mata temple beside it.
• Raniji ki Baori, Bundi: built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati, the most elaborate of the stepwells of Bundi, a town so full of them that it is called the city of stepwells.
• Toorji ka Jhalra, Jodhpur: built about 1740 by the queen consort of Maharaja Abhay Singh, cut in the red sandstone of the city.
• Panna Meena ka Kund, Amer, Jaipur district and Hadi Rani ki Baori at Todaraisingh, Tonk district, both known for their symmetrical criss crossing stairs.
• Nagar Sagar Kunds and Dabhai Kund, Bundi, and the Neemrana baori in Alwar district.

Chhatris, havelis and the later buildings

A chhatri is a cenotaph, a domed pavilion on pillars raised over the cremation place of a ruler, and each dynasty had its own ground: Gaitore at Jaipur for the Kachhwahas, Ahar or Mahasatiya at Udaipur for the Sisodias, Devi Kund Sagar at Bikaner for the Rathores, Bada Bagh at Jaisalmer for the Bhattis and Kshar Bagh at Kota for the Haras. Jaswant Thada at Jodhpur, built in 1899 of translucent white marble in memory of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, is the best known of them. The haveli, a courtyard mansion of a merchant family, reached its height in two places: Jaisalmer, where the Patwon ki Haveli begun in 1805 by Guman Chand Patwa, the Salim Singh ki Haveli and the Nathmal ji ki Haveli stand in carved yellow sandstone, and Shekhawati, where the painted walls of the havelis of Nawalgarh, Mandawa, Fatehpur and Ramgarh have earned the region the name of the world's largest open air art gallery. From the eighteenth century the Kachhwaha court at Jaipur added the Jantar Mantar, the masonry observatory of Sawai Jai Singh II completed in 1734 and inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2010, and the Hawa Mahal of 1799, built for Sawai Pratap Singh to a design by Lal Chand Ustad, whose latticed screens let the women of the household watch the street unseen.