PLAN AND SECTION OF A STEPWELL
(drawn by Junji Shirai, based on the Dada Harir Stepwell in Ahmadabad)
ifrom the March number of the gInternational Architectureh, 1966,
No.1 of the serial essay of eUnknown Architecture in Indiaf)

To tell the truth, there was an additional reason for the astonishment at these drawings: they had been drawn on an exaggerated scale, about 30% larger than the actual Dada Harir Stepwell. Though its width is correct, its length appears to be about 92m on the accompanying scale but is actually about 70m on the ground, and while it depicts seven underground stories, there are actually five. Probably, there was not enough time to survey accurately and his Indian students were inexperienced and without good apparatus.

When an architect first looks at these drawings, he would be surely stunned, wondering if such a spectacular underground edifice really exists. It would be incredible even if the drawings are without exaggeration.
Shirai wrote that he could visit, at those days, only four stepwells, two in Ahmadabad, one in Mehsana, and one in Patan. Based on one of them, Dada Harir Stepwell in Ahmadabad, these extreme drawings astonished us all the more clearly because of their exaggeration. (I wonder if he had intentionally made extreme drawings in expectation of that, so he did not mention the name of this stepwell. That is, no stepwell exactly as these drawings exists.)

Stimulated by this information I visited many stepwells in the Gujarat and Rajasthan regions for the first time in 1976 and was deeply impressed, already close to 40 years ago!
(The Dada Harir Stepwell was constructed in the late 15th century under Islamic rule, so it has no figurative carvings of creatures.)