Person · Chaulukya queen & patron

Udayamatī

Also known as Udayamati, Rani Udayamati, Udaymati

Date

eleventh century

Function

Authority & administration

Tradition

Prabandha-Chintāmani; Solanki tradition

Confidence

Established / referenced

Worth knowing

The stepwell she built is a memorial in the form of a public utility: seven storeys of sculpture around a working well, so mourning and water-carrying happen in the same structure. It appears on the hundred-rupee note.

Connections (4)

• Contemporary capital withModhera Sun Temple

  Modherā's sun temple and Patan's stepwell are both Solanki works of the same two generations, raised under Bhīma I and his queen. One sends a tank down in terraces in front of a shrine, the other sends the shrine itself underground around the water. The same masons' vocabulary does both.

• PatronageBhīma I of Gujarat

  Udayamatī was Bhīma I's queen and built Rāni-kī-Vāv at Patan as his memorial about 1063, after his death. The Prabandha-Chintāmani records the commission by name, which is why the stepwell is one of very few great Indian monuments whose woman patron is documented rather than inferred. He is not the Eastern Chālukya Bhīma I of Vengi, who ruled a hundred and thirty years earlier and built Drākshārāmam; two Chalukya houses each produced a Bhīma I remembered for temples.

• PatronageRani ki Vav, Patan

  Udayamatī commissioned Rāni-kī-Vāv about 1063 as a memorial to her husband Bhīma I, and the Prabandha-Chintāmani names her, which makes it one of very few great Indian monuments whose woman patron is documented rather than inferred from the building. It is also a memorial in the form of a public utility: seven storeys of sculpture around a working well, so mourning and water-carrying happened in the same structure.

• PatronageThe vāv

  Rani ki Vav was built by Udayamati, widow of Bhima I, about 1063, and it is the largest and deepest of the Gujarat wells. The pattern repeats: Rudabai at Adalaj, Dhai Harir at Ahmedabad, and several smaller vavs whose inscriptions name women. A stepwell was both a public work and a women's space — the place where water was drawn and where the village's women met away from the sun — which is the usual explanation offered for who commissioned them.

Sources

The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.