WELL.
Baori, Baoli, . . I Chat), Pus.
Bao, MAUR. I Drawing water has ordintuily been the employ milt of females throughout the east from a remote antiquity. Some of the wells in India are con structed with much architectural embellishment, of great depth, and of considerable breadth. The more ancient are of a square form, those of recent date axe frequently round. They are surrounded for their whole depth with galleries in the rich and massy style of Hindu works, and have often a broad flight of steps which com mences at some distance from the well, and passes under part of the galleries down to the water. The deep wells have the descent from the brink by long flights of steps leading far down below the surface of the ground, relieved lay landing-places and covered chambers, in which travellers may rest and take refreshment during the heat of the day.
In the alluvial lands of India., and in the beds of rivers, wells are frequently sunk by means of earthenware or iron rings, which are placed one over the other, and the inside earth or sand being scooped out, the rings sink down. These are called pot-wells, and in Bangalore cost about five rupees for a well eighteen feet deep. In Madras town a pot-well can be sunk at the rate of a rupee a foot.
Near Futtehpur, in sinking a well, the people build a hollow masonry tower, of the diameter required, and 20 or 30 feet high from the surface of the ground. This is allowed to stand a year or more till it become firm and compact ; then they gradually undermine and promote its sinking into the sandy soil. When it has sunk to a level with the surface, they raise the wall higher, and go on throwing out the sand and raising the wall till they obtain water. Some of the wells of India are of several hundred yards in depth. In the Rajputana desert, water is only come to at depths up to 700 feet. But in the granitic tracts of India, the depth of wells ranges from 12 to 40 feet, according to the swell of the ground.
The importance of wells in an arid tropical country cannot be exaggerated, and the fame which is acquired by sinkers of wells has an illustration in John iv. 6, where the well of Jacob, sunk three thousand years before, was still distinguished.
Even yet, among the Hindu people, to sink a well, or form a water reservoir or tank, is deemed an act of merit. In the Panjab, pucka wells are usually worked by the harth or Persian wheel. A broad-edged lantern wheel, whose axis lies horizontally over the centre of the well's mouth, carries, on its broad edge, a long belt of moonj rope made like a rope ladder, the ends of which, jomed m an endless band, reach below the surface of the water. To this, at every step of the rope ladder, an earthen pot called tind is fixed. As the wheel revolves, the large rope belt descends into the water with its pots, the pots become filled with water, and are drawn up. As they reach the top of the wheel, they are, by the revolution of the wheel, inverted, and their con tents poured out into a trough, which is ready to receive them, and which leads to the water course of the fields to be irrigated. Wells are often sunk in the alluvial soils of India as founda tions for architectural structures.
In the Persian method of cooling wells, the well is covered in with beams, mats, and earth, and thatch is built over it to shield the wafer frcim the sun. The well, having been filled during the cold weather, may be opened in May, and the water .1 remains as cool to the taste as ordinary ice water ' throughout the hot season. The water may be purified by being withdrawn into au earthen reservoir adjoining the well, and allowed to flow back. Ali Razza Khan, a Kazzilbash, a S the first to introduce these wells into the Panjab. Two may be seen at Lahore, one near the Lohari gate, the other in the Sultan Serai. There arc also two in the town of .Amritsar, and one at Peshawur. The people crowd to those wells during the hot season as to a fair. The ordinary mode of raising water in India is by the hand, but in the south of the Peninsula of India the pe-cottah is used. It is a lever balanced on a pole, from one end of which falls a bamboo with an iron pot, and a man walks from one end of the lever to another to raise and depress the re spective ends.—Powell, Handbook ; Econ. Prod. Panjab, p. 207 ; Heber, ii. p. 357. See Water.