High purity nanorods of vanadium doped zinc oxide with five different concentrations are prepared by a well known ceramic double sintering method. XRD patterns of the samples reveal a wurtzite phase formation. SEM micrographs confirm the nanorods in the samples. Purity of the samples is characterised using EDX analysis. UV-Vis-NIR study of the samples shows a red shift in bandgap for the substitution of V in ZnO matrix. FTIR study confirms the presence of defect states and enhancement of covalent bonding over ionic bond due to the incorporation of the V ions into ZnO lattice. An ultimate find we report in the present work is that the addition of V in ZnO could smoothly tailor the optical bandgap energy due to formation of the exciton states. An enhancement of covalent bonding in V doped ZnO will provide a platform for the third order susceptibility or photonic applications. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.