Books & arts
来源于《图书和艺术》版块
Conservation in India
印度的保护
Liquid assets
流动资产

India has thousands of surviving stepwells, but the great majority are similarly run-down. Many others have vanished, often filled in and built upon. This neglectful attitude is extraordinary, for they are one of India’s unsung wonders. At last, through restoration efforts by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), among others, they are starting to get the recognition they deserve.

印度有数千口现存的梯级井，但绝大多数梯级井也同样在衰竭。许多已经消失，经常需要填补和重修。这种忽视的态度是不同寻常的，因为梯级井是印度无名的奇迹之一。最后，通过阿加汗文化信托基金等机构的修复努力，梯级井开始得到应有的承认。
The earliest of the wells date back almost 2,000 years. They were first and foremost a response to a climate in which a year’s rains fall chiefly in the four brief months of the summer monsoon, when they fall at all. The point of the staircases and side ledges is to provide permanent access to ever-fluctuating water levels—and cool shelter in the hottest months. In the north-western regions that are India’s most arid, such as Rajasthan and Gujarat, the baolis underwrote life, as sources of both irrigation and drinking water. They were often located on ancient trade routes. In Delhi, every community once had its own tank.
最早的梯级井可以追溯到2000年前。梯级井首先是对一种气候的反应，在这种气候中，一年的降雨主要集中在夏季季风的四个月里，而这四个月正是雨季来临的时候。楼梯和侧壁架的重点是为不断波动的水位提供永久性的通道，并在最热的月份提供凉爽的庇护所。在印度最干旱的西北地区，如拉贾斯坦邦和古吉拉特邦，baoli作为灌溉和饮用水的来源，支撑了人们的生活。它们通常坐落在古老的贸易路线上。在德里，每个社区曾经都有自己的水槽。
Many stepwells were used for ablution; the tanks associated with mosques, Hindu temples and other shrines offered the most purificatory form. Summoning water from the depths was also a symbol of temporal power. Around Hyderabad in south-central India, many of the baolis were built by kings and zamindars. A surprising number were built at the behest of women, including princesses, courtesans and merchants’ wives, who wished to attain immortality through the gift of water. Indeed, stepwells have always been considered women’s spaces—places to gather without inhibitions, away from men’s domineering eyes (in India, after all, it is traditionally a woman’s job to fetch and carry water). Rani-ki- Vav, or the queen’s stepwell, in Patan in Gujarat, graces the new 100-rupee note.
许多阶梯井用于洗浴；清真寺、印度寺庙和其他神殿的水槽提供了最洁净的方式。从深处召唤水也是世俗力量的象征。在印度中南部的海德拉巴周围，许多宝丽寺是由国王和赞美达建造的。在女性的要求下，包括公主、交际花和商人的妻子，她们希望通过水的礼物获得永生，因此建造了数量惊人的雕像。事实上，阶梯井一直被认为是女性的空间——一个不受约束、远离男性霸道目光的地方(毕竟，在印度，传统上取水和挑水是女性的工作)。古吉拉特邦帕坦的“女王阶梯井”为新版面值100的卢比增色。
And, as you descend into them, what mind-boggling structures these wells are. Their early builders were capable of astonishing feats of engineering. The Chand Baori in Abhaneri, east of Jaipur (the capital of Rajasthan), resembles an inverted ziggurat. Its 13 storeys and 3,500 narrow steps prefigure M.C. Escher’s “impossible objects” by centuries. The Panna Meena Ka Kund stepwell, also near Jaipur, is another elaborate masterpiece. Hindu embellishments to baolis included covered arcades and pavilions that served as refuges from the heat and even as lodgings. Sculptures and friezes were crammed with gods, animals and humans. Spreading Muslim rule introduced a more austere, though no less impressive, architecture of arches and jaalis (stone lattice windows).

当你深入其中，你会发现这些井的结构是多么令人难以置信。早期的造井者具有惊人的工程才能。在斋浦尔(拉贾斯坦邦的首都)以东的阿巴涅里，Chand Baori就像一个倒立的金字型建筑。13层楼和3500个狭窄的台阶，预示着M.C.埃舍尔的“不可能图形”将存在数百年。同样位于斋浦尔附近的Panna Meena Ka Kund阶梯井是另一件精致的杰作。印度人对baoli的装饰包括有顶的拱廊和亭子，用作避暑的庇护所，甚至是住所。雕塑和楣板上刻画了神、动物和人类。穆斯林统治的扩张带来了一种更为简朴，但同样令人印象深刻的拱门和贾里斯(石格子窗)建筑。
But all this was abandoned. The decline of the stepwell began with the British raj, which insisted baolis were unhygienic havens of vermin and disease. They called for them to be filled in or barricaded. The raj’s administrators were blind to their role in socialising and as subterranean caravanserais. Independent India’s encouragement of diesel-powered borewells proved to be the baoli’s death-knell.
但这一切都被抛弃了。阶梯井的衰落始于英国拉贾斯坦邦统治时期，当时的英国坚持认为，baoli是害虫和疾病的不卫生庇护所。他们要求将其填满或设置路障。拉贾斯坦邦的管理者对他们在社交和地下商队中的角色视而不见。独立后的印度鼓励以柴油为动力的钻井，这是baoli的丧钟。
Yet these borewells’ impactonthewater table, plus untrammelled urban development, have led to a drastic depletion of natural aquifers and a countrywide water crisis. That is one reason why the restoration efforts of the AKTC and like-minded groups have struck a chord: more Indians are wondering whether old-fashioned water-conservation methods have lessons for today.
然而，这些钻井对地下水位的影响，加上不受限制的城市发展，已经导致了自然含水层的急剧枯竭和全国性的水危机。这就是为什么阿加汗文化信托基金和志同道合的团体的恢复努力引起了共鸣的原因之一：越来越多的印度人想知道传统的节水方法对今天是否有借鉴意义。
At Nizamuddin dargah, the trust has saved the baoli. Its workers cleared the tank of tonnes of sludge, and relaid the neighbourhood’s sewage pipes. Marrying traditional workmanship with laser scans and ground-penetrating radar, the trust rebuilt the baoli in a form as close to the original as possible. In the process, a subterranean passage from the saint’s tomb to the tank was uncovered, along with water springs and the well’s wooden foundations.
在Nizamuddin dargah，信托基金拯救了baoli。工人们清理了水箱里的数吨污泥，并重新铺设了附近的污水管道。该基金会将传统工艺与激光扫描和探地雷达相结合，以尽可能接近原始的形式重建了baoli。在这个过程中，发现了一个从圣人的坟墓到水槽的地下通道，还发现了泉水和井底的木质地基。
Meanwhile, the trust also turned to the adjacent, huge gardens belonging to Humayun’s tomb, a Mughal building of even more breathtaking beauty than the Taj Mahal. The lush grounds are covered in tanks and wells that the trust is restoring. With Ratish Nanda, the AKTC’s enthusiastic head in India, this correspondent recently descended to the bottom of a baoli that was being cleared of centuries of rubble and sludge, bucket by laborious bucket. Two weeks later, water was starting to gush in. One find, covered over by the British, is a 16th-century well built not to capture water, but to ensure it flows back into the underlying aquifer. Mr Nanda says the restoration work has helped raise the area’s water table by several metres.

与此同时，信托基金还转向了毗邻的巨大花园，属于呼玛雍陵墓，一座比泰姬陵更美得惊人的莫卧儿王朝建筑。郁郁葱葱的土地上布满了基金会正在恢复的水槽和水井。最近，本文记者和基金会在印度热情的带头人哈提斯·南达一起，来到一个baoli的底部，人们正在一桶一桶地费清理数百年的瓦砾和污泥。两周后，水开始涌进来。英国人发现一处16世纪建造的井，不是为了取水，而是为了确保水能流回地下含水层。南达表示，修复工作帮助该地区的地下水位提高了几米。
Next door, in Sunder Nursery, the trust has converted 90 acres (36 hectares) of abandoned land into the sooty capital’s first new park in years, laid out as a classical Persian garden. Again, tanks and wells are an essential component. “Delhi needed a refuge,” says Mr Nanda. The gardens have become one of the most popular spots for the city’s families and lovers. The AKTC is now taking on the most ambitious project yet: a 106-acre site in Hyderabad, where seven stepwells were built by the Qutb Shabi dynasty in ornate, white-plastered granite. As became clear during the restoration, they were linked by underground channels that also connect to aquifers.
在毗邻的Sunder Nursery，该信托基金已将90英亩(36公顷)的废弃土地改造成这座被煤烟笼罩的首都数年来的第一个新公园，规划为一座古典波斯花园。“德里需要一个避难所，”南达表示。这些花园已经成为这座城市最受家庭和情侣欢迎的景点之一。基金会目前正在进行迄今为止最具雄心的项目:在海德拉巴占地106英亩的土地上，库特布沙比王朝在华丽的白色石膏花岗岩上建造了7口阶梯井。很明显，在修复期间，它们通过接连着地下通道相连，地下通道也连接着含水层。
Some of the obstacles to this effort are not physical but political. To help pay for its conservation work, the trust seeks donations from Indian companies. Yet supporters of the Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, dislike the idea of a body headed by the Aga Khan, an Islamic leader, being involved in Indian cultural work; besides, the Hindutva agenda is to expunge Mughal influence from Indian life, as if it were an alien, Muslim carbuncle rather than an intrinsic part of the country’s inheritance. They are said to have been leaning on companies not to donate. That arid worldview is refuted by the joyful families picnicking in Sunder Nursery, and the devotion of pilgrims at Nizamuddin baoli.
而该活动遇到的障碍不是物质上的，而是政治上的。为了帮助支付保护工作的费用，该基金会寻求印度公司的捐款。然而，印度总理纳伦德拉•莫迪领导的印度教民族主义政府的支持者不喜欢由伊斯兰领袖阿迦汗领导的机构参与印度文化工作；此外，Hindutva的议程是要从印度生活中抹去莫卧儿王朝的影响，就好像它是一种外来的穆斯林红玉，而不是这个国家遗产的固有部分。据说他们一直要求公司不要捐款。那些在桑德尔托儿所野餐的快乐家庭，以及在尼扎穆丁保利朝圣的虔诚信徒，都驳斥了这种枯燥的世界观。

来源：经济学人