English: This is a JPEG format plan and architectural drawing of a historic Indian temple or monument. An alternate SVG format (scalable vector graphics) version of this file – for web graphics, design studies, print, dynamic and interactive applications – has also been uploaded to wikimedia commons.

The drawing:

• This is the floor plan of the step well found in Vayad village, about 25 kilometers northwest of Patan city, in Patan district. It is about 4 kilometers from the Banas river nearby (seasonal).

• This is a different style and architecture of a "vav", than other step wells found in Patan area (compare, for example, with the Rani ka vav – a world heritage site). Step wells were built with numerous designs in western and Deccan regions of India, and their designs are discussed in the Sanskrit texts of the 1st millennium.

• This a 10th to 11th-century monument, with inscriptions from the 12th and 13th century. The monument is an example of dana tradition in Hinduism, where wealthy individuals gave away their wealth for charitable causes and public projects such as a water well (see Henry Cousens and Jas Burgess's Archaeological Survey of Western India Volume IX, pp. 112–113). The pillars of this monument are notable as they are the template design found in many Gujarat mosques built in and after the 14th-century.

• The step wells typically included some or extensive artwork, which included both secular and those corresponding to the patron's religious beliefs. The Vayad step well has Shaiva artwork (Shiva, Bhairava, etc). It is unusually narrow down to the water level, but has a square mandapa. This may be because this was a smaller step well, was meant to serve the local villagers and farming needs.

• GPS location of the monument:

૨૪° ૦૧′ ૫૩.૩″ N, ૭૨° ૦૨′ ૨૫″ E

View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap

24.031472; 72.040278

• The relative scale and relative dimensions in this architectural drawing are close to the actual but neither exact nor complete. The plan illustrates the design and layout, but some intricate details or parts of the temple may not be shown. In cases where exact measurements were not feasible, the drawing uses best approximations and rounds the best measurements feasible. This drawing uses the data and ground plan published by Jas Burgess and Henry Cousens in Archaeological Survey of Western India Volume IX (Plates CIV – CVI) in 1903, and which are in public domain.

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