Banarsi- The woven tale of banaras

ABSTRACT It’s the tale of the enriching banarasi silk sarees which fascinates us and desire to have one. This document covers the whole journey of this heritage making.

Rimjhim Bharati Guide: Mahesh Shaw

BANARASI The woven tale of banaras

1. INTRODUCTION “Older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend – and looks twice as old as all of them put together”- Mark Twain on The City of Varanasi Varanasi city is situated at the bank of holy river the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh state. It is very old city and also known as Kashi or Banaras, Kashi is mentioned in old Hindu pauranik books and it is believed that Kashi is as old as Indian civilization. There are many archaeological as well as mythology evidences which prove Banaras to be the oldest inhabited city. It is believed that Varanasi got its name from two tributary river of Ganga named as “Varuna” and “Ashi” flowing by the city. Varanasi is famous for many reasons such as due to being as ancient city, religious belief, and Banarasi Saree.

Varanasi is the hub of arts and crafts. The city is dominated by small scale industry, cottage industry and household production. Banarasi saree is the product of these cottage industries.

Banarasi saree is one of the adornments among sixteen adornments that a bride carries to adorn her beauty and without which the bridal look is incomplete. These sarees comprise lot of zari work and are usually heavy. These are in great demands during wedding season; brides wear Banarasi Saree during marriage. These sarees are worn by all community on special occasion.

These saree are also worn during festive and other such festive as these sarees brings a lot of aura and women feel delicate and feminine.

With the popularity of Banarasi saree, a lot of fake manufacturers started making similar looking sarees and sold them under the label of “Banarasi saree”. This is really a great threat. Common people can hardly make difference between authentic and fake one.With this the real artists/weavers were losing their identity, in 2009 after two years of wait, weavers associations registered and confirmed geographical indication(GI) rights for their “Banarasi saree and Brocades”.

According to the GI, Banarasi saree fall under four classes (23-26), application no (99) they are silk brocades, textile goods, silk saree, dress material and silk embroidery. With this GI rights no other saree except which are manufactured in Varanasi and some other chosen districts like Mirzapur, Chandauli, Bhadohi, Jaunpur and Azamgarh districts can be labelled or sold as “Banarasi saree”.

HISTORY The art and culture of Banarasi saree is very ancient, it has flourished Varanasi as centre of textile. In ancient times, Varanasi was famous for the weaving cotton textiles including sarees

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but soon they switched to weave silk. Vedic Scripts have mentioned silk and brocades of Banaras to be flourishing before Mugals arrival.

They are mentioned in Mahabharata which dates back between 1000 to 300 B.C, also discussed in Jatak Puran about Banaras being the centre for silk and cotton fabrics in the time period in which Varanasi was the capital kingdom of which Siddhartha was the prince.

Textile and weaving industry thrived back during the rule of Mauryan reign. In Buddha Sutra where prince Siddhartha renounce worldly luxuries he takes off his silk clothes which were woven in Varanasi. The brocade and zari textiles of Banaras are mentioned in the 19th century literatures.

With the advent of Mugal era the city saw new heights in brocade with intricate designs and zari work, in the reign of Mugal emperor Akbar around 14th century. It was the time when Banarasi saree became popular with fashion of Indian and Persian patterns.

Mugals brought fine craftsmen in India who all tried their best to take the art of weaving and designing at great height and worked on intricate art of weaving. During Mugal era the Persians motifs were being mixed with the Indian attire and created rare combination of Indian and Persian patterns. During this era, they used threads made out of true gold but with time they are now Zari golden threads with least amount of gold actually just a cotton yarn covered with golden or silver look like yarn , and at the end of the process the shine of saree is incomparable(4).

It is said to prevent real gold saree from losing its shine they were washed with petroleum.

A famine in 1603 at Gujarat forced many silk weavers of there to migrate to Varanasi in 17th Century. As so silk brocades weaving started in Banaras during 17th century as the weavers got new environment new ideas and innovations gave way and by 19th century the city developed excellence in it which flourish city as the Textile capital.

The continuation of passing down the culture of artistry of Banarasi saree from one generation to another has never been stopped. There are some mentions about these saree that they were traded to many countries and continents from Varanasi. There are no strong points to confirm the trades during the periods, but texts do mention about silk, gold fabric which points out the Banarasi saree to be very famous then.

Many weavers, in and around the city of Banaras and engaged in this industry in which Muslims are the dominant community. The silk is procured from the south India mainly Bangalore. Earlier they were brought from China.

TYPES OF BANARASI SAREE AND BROCADES: One can distinguish a Banarasi saree easily because of the richness of gold work, metallic effect, compact weaving, golden silver zari border in which a string of upright leaves called jhallar is at the outer edge of border, small motifs that cover the entire saree, bel butta design, kalga, carpet Page 2 of 15

design, minakari work, silk fabric and pallu. The fabrics now range from silk to georgette to pure cotton.

The pallu of Banarasi saree is very important for its uniqueness, full of intricate floral motifs, Jaali work.

There are two basic varieties of Banarasi sarees:• Pure Silk Saree (Katan) • Organza Saree (Kora) These are further divided into categories like Jangla, Tanchoi, Tissue, Cutwork, Butidar saree based on design.

There are three types of Banaras Brocades saree:Opaque zari brocade: Opaque zari brocade is divided into two types depending upon the amount of supplementary weft (zari threads) present in it. One is denser, heavier silks with very narrow borders and another with light weight, opaque silks with heavy zari borders.

Amru Brocade: The supplementary weft patterning of these brocades is woven in silk, not in Zari thread. The threads may be either untwisted, giving a thick line to the woven design or they may be twisted yarns that produce a finer, denser pattern. One distinctive type of amru brocade is the tanchoi (originated from china). A densely patterned, heavy fabric is created that has no floats on the reverse. Traditionally the face of the fabric has a satin weave ground with smaller patterns made by the weft threads repeated over the entire surface.

AbrawansBrocade: They are either zari brocade or an amru but the ground fabric is always transparent silk muslins or organza with fine coloured silk or zari supplementary thread patterning. In this the supplementary thread which create the patterning through their contrast colours are as fine as the ground fabric, resulting a transparent cloth at first glance.

Two sub group one is ‘cutwork’ brocade. The transparent silk fabric has supplementary weft patterning woven in heavier, thicker fibres than the ground. Silk, zari, synthetic fibres and at times wool are used to create the supplementary weft designs, but instead of each motif being separately woven in by hand as a discontinuous weft, the threads extended the entire width of fabric, leaving floats at the back that are cut away by hand after weaving.

Second is called tarbana or tissue brocade. It has very fine silk warp, but the weft threads of the ground are of zari instead of silk, giving the cloth a metallic sheen.

Kimkhab Brocade: Kimkhab brocade is largely covered by zari patterning, and in some cases the underlying silk cloth is hardly visible. They are commonly worn as wedding saris.

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Transition in design Originally the saree were designed with zari brocades of real gold or silver threads which is rare now and can be seen only in museums. These zari threads are now replaced with cotton or polyester yarn at its core, wrapped with golden or silver metallic yarn, yet they add elegance and dazzling shine to the saree, making it affordable for general population.

With the advent of different rulers and change in taste of people, the weavers always created new designs and styles of saree.

Banarasi saree has gone through many changes in context with colour, patterns, motifs, borders and styles over the years. During 350AD to 500 AD there were floral patterns, animal and bride depictions.

By 13th century ‘Butidar‘designs gained popularity. Between Mugals advent to following cultural concoction in 16th century, Islamic patterns like floral and “Jail” or “Jaal” came in demand adding new designs with Indian designs.

Soon with advent of 19th century, Indian designs followed Victorian style wall papers and geometrical patterns. Today the designs of traditional pattern mixing with colour and style are revived according to the market demands.

Manufacturing Process Weaving is an art in which with two sets of threads if placed perpendicular to each other with interlacement together they form a fabric. The technical names of these two threads are Warp (Tana) and Weft (Bana). The yarns parallel to the length of the fabric is technically called warp and that of perpendicular to warp are known as weft. The lowering and rising of the warp thread in a sequence results in various weaves. The waving takes place on looms. Looms are that type of frames in which warp strands fix firmly in their positions and threading wefts over them. They used Pit looms, Power looms with Dobby and jacquard attachments, but jacquard looms are mostly used because of its capability to weave complicated designs.

The manufacturing process can be divided into three groups such as Pre-weaving processes, weaving and post weaving processes. The Pre-Weaving Process includes preparation of weft and warp yarns and preparation of designs. While the Post Weaving process includes mending, trimming, polishing and cleaning.

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STEP WISE PROCESSES OF WEAVING BANARASI SAREE

Design Preparation

Naksha drawing

Punch Card Preparation

Weaving

Mending

Trimming

Cleaning

Polishing

Packing

Steps of making a Banarasi brocades.

Pre-Weaving Process Design (Naksha) drawing: Naksha drawing is believed to have been introduced around 990AD. The inherited artists of Banarasi saree, and many specially trained artists for designing designs of Banarasi saree, are the first gem. These artists might not be educated but they can create wonderful designs for saree.

The designer knows all the technicalities and manipulations of weaving, before designing they see its artistic and technical aspects of reproduction and then prescribes the proper method and direction to do.

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Designing motifs on graph sheet

The motif with colour concepts

These artists draw designs on graph paper with colour concepts. Designing on graph paper have reason. The different parts of saree have different designs. The design of Pallu is different than design of border. The whole body could have different designs and motifs. The famous designs are kalka, buti, bel, jal, floral and foliage.

Meena Kari designs are used in Banarsi saree. In this work, Between Zari work and space some coloured silk is filled which make the motif to be colourful more beautiful. Even geometric designs have come in and other designs as per the demand of market. This stage of designing and most stages of weaving are done by majority of Muslims from the time of Mugal era.

Other designs are created on graph sheets

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Punch Cards The drawing designs on graph paper helps them to make punch cards, which are used in Jacquard machine to create design in the fabric. The punch cards are made of cardboards.

With the help of hammer and nail, circular holes are created in the punch card based on the graph. These holes are guides for particular which colour thread has to pass through which card hole at what stage. There are 100 of such cards punched then they all will be connected together into a chain of Bundle. Each card looks like Braille version of the same design which looms can understand, these cards are like the blue prints of the saree. They are paddled in systematic manner that the main weaving picks up right colour and pattern to create the design and weave as well.

The tool with which punches are made.

The punches are made according to the design on graph .

A man is punching holes according to the design.

Hundred of such punch cards are punched.

Yarn Pre-Process The pre-process of weaving are yarn twisting and reeling, degumming, dying of yarn, warping, and denting.

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Yarn

Twisting and Reeling

Degumming

Dyeing

Warping

Yarn Twisting and Reeling Twisting is one of the most important steps in the process of making silk yarns, and increase the strength of the yarn for further treatments like dyeing, weaving. A silk warp yarn is made of several single yarns twisted (with a left hand twist) to right. Twisting increases the strength of a yarn.

By winding two strands of silk into multiple threads, one can reel the bundle of yarn to skein lacing. Winding can be carried out by either modifying the yarn crossing the angle or by adjusting the skein width up to 400 mm. The warp yarns of 20-30 sarees (140-210) yards are reeled like spring in a big reel.

Degumming Degumming is the process of removing the sericin (silk gum) from raw silk. Sericin is protective layer over raw silk filaments. Its removal makes silk filaments shiny, soft, and makes them easily absorb dye molecules. The sericin is removed by boiling of silk in soap water like Carbonate of Soda, for two to three hours and continuous rubbing the yarns with hands, after yarn become soft they are washed two to three times in tepid water. This process is called Degumming; locally this process is known as nikhar or kharna. If the thread is not degummed the colouring matter will not penetrate the fibres of the threads and colour will always come off .

Dyeing Process There are three types of dyeing colour 1. Reactive dyes 2. Acid dyes 3. Natural dyes Natural dyes include flower, leaves, barks, roots, vegetable dyes, katha, etc. with the use of natural dyes the colour of the saree last long and remain same as it was first brought after wearing, washing and storing for long years. But with the introduction of acid dyes, they were vastly used for their brilliant colour, economic, and easier to use and take less time in dyeing.

But the colours were also fugitive . These dyes are sodium salts of organic acids (mostly sulphonic

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acid) and are applied from acidic medium. Dyeing requires proper dye containing fewer impurities, quality of water, proper dyeing duration and drying.

But in Varanasi, they use different methods, as cost of productions is low since investment of vessels and materials they use is low, for water they collect it from pump of Varanasi Nagar Nigam.

Procedure: First they soak silk yarns in water with little amount of coconut oil for about 20 minutes then they squeeze them and remove excess water. At 40oC 60 gram of dye is pasted with water and heated then it is applied to 20 litre of water with 5kg of silk, in presence of acid up to 60 OC for 2-4 hours dyeing is done. Then squeezed and dried.

The dominating colours are different hues of pink and red. Pyazi (light pink), gulabi (pink), lal(red), sultani surkh (scarlet) are obtained by aniline dyes which makes these coloured sarees to be very economic and thus these colour are very dominating in respect to other group of colours.

Karaundia (light crimson), badami( light buff), narangi (orange), kesari(saffron), kahi (dark green), sabza (light green), phirozi (turquoise blue), lajwardi (lapis lazuli), nimboo i(lemon yellow), zard(yellow) etc. are some other ranges of colours produced in banarasi saree.

Warping: Warping process is done by tying the yarn between two poles. Entangles in the yarns are checked and the knots are removed. A cotton thread is laced into the warp as it is easy to trace the entangled silk thread.

Then these yarns are divided, half is packed and used for weft threads and other half is sent for setting on loom as warp yarns.

Setting the Loom: The open space between each wire of the reed is called dent. A warp end is passed through a dent with the help of the hook, after it passes through the heald. This process is called denting .The process of the silk threads not be weaved directly so these threads are tied which helps wraps to weave .All the warp threads have to be threaded through the healed eyelet and its gap in the reed prior to weaving which take about one week to complete such process is called Beaming. The reed is like a comb and its purpose is to control the separation of the warp threads.

The heald is the part of the loom that is used to move the warp threads up and down. The threads pass through eyelets of the heald.

For a simple weave pattern alternate eyelets are moved up to raise the corresponding warp threads, and the threads between are moved down. When the shuttle travels back their positions are reversed.

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Weaving Weaving is carried out on a loom where warp yarns run length ways from back to front. Using a shuttle, weft yarns is threaded width wise.

Figure 1 : The punch cards on the Jacquard loom.

The Jacquard attached loom uses punch cards for creating patterns. There are hooks which moves up or down depending on the hole or no hole on the card. If there will be hole the hook will lower and no hole then it will raise up. The hook raises or lowers the harness, which carries and guide warp threads and giving space by warp creating a shed through which the weft thread is passed and the reed will align it thus creating a pattern. This made the whole process of weaving infinitely flexible; any image could be embodied into a chain of punch cards and woven through Jacquard loom.

Weaving is done with two looms one on Power loom and one on pit looms with Jacquard attachments. A saree gets completed faster on Power looms than Pit looms. It can take 15-30 day for power loom depending upon the complexity of the design and 3 months to 6 months or even one year for Handlooms. For Power looms one person is required but for Handlooms at least two persons are required to weave saree. One person controls loom and another moves zari thread.

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The power loom

Post Weaving Process: After completion of weaving of saree, it is sent for error correction, cutting process, cleaning and polishing.

Mending process: Once the sarees are completely woven then they are sent for error corrections. This is a house based chore. They have all kind of threads, yarns of all variety and colour, buties and beads etc.

With great experience and judgement and sharp eye they find smallest mistake on saree and correct with simple reel and needle.

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A boy sewing and correcting the motifs.

Collection of all threads and beads.

Trimming Process: Trimming is carried out to trim off extra weft threads also called as floats i.e. mina (coloured) silk threads or zari threads which are not part of design in saree. As weft threads are well weaved there is no chance of removal of weft thread which is weaved in saree. This process is done manually with scissor or knife.

These long floats of zari weft thread are cut which will not break as they are weaved very well.

Cleaning Process: There are these giant machines which cost up to 10-12 lakh and suck all the loose cut out threads from saree. They stitch all saree together with their end, making it into a long saree.

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After cleaning the stitches are removed. This machine behaves as Vacuum cleaner. There will be a roller on which when saree rolls then all those lose floats get straight which then helps to easily suck out the waste threads. The waste part is blown out in big bags made out of waste saree and with this process sarees is completely free from all loose threads, dust etc.

The machine in which trimmed threads are collected.

The bag are made from old saree where all loose threads are sucked and thrown in this bags.

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The saree are stitched together for easy cleaning of all saree.

Polishing Part: The woven fabric when taken off the loom is called ‘kora than’. The fabric is pressed well and folded. Formerly, the fabric is washed in a specially prepared bath, then dried up, pressed, glazed and folded. Now the pressing is done through machine rollers. Before this the fabric undergoes with sizing material after mounting the sizing solution is spreader this process is called Polishing.

These sarees do shine and glitter because of the Zari brocades but after polish the shine gets double. The saree are folded, labelled and packed for sale out.

The Karkhanas The common weavers are called Jullaha but the weavers of Banarasi brocades are called Karigars work under the guidance of managed Karkhanas. One room consists of 3-4 handlooms and according to the no of Handlooms there would be rectangular pits in these pit looms the Jacquard are installed which gives space for weavers to sit comfortably and work for long hours.

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The weavers sit and work for long hour.

Figure 2 : The pit gives space for warp movement and helps weavers to sit comfortably.

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