If the first language of Banaras is silk, its alphabet is the motif. Every tiny booti, every sprawling jangla, every border and lattice carries a meaning. To learn them is to read a Banarasi not just as cloth, but as a text written in thread.
✨ Fun fact: Banaras has a name for almost every pattern — from coins and moons to starfruit and the eye of a nightingale.
Bootis and bootas: the scattered blossoms
A booti is a whisper — a tiny motif scattered across the field like a star. A boota is its bolder cousin, larger and more elaborate, blooming across the pallu and border. Among the best-loved:
- Asharfi booti — round as a gold coin (asharfi), woven to carry the blessing of prosperity; colonial-era traders are said to have nicknamed it the ‘dollar booti’.
- Chand-tara booti — moon and star together, echoing Mughal night skies, a favourite in bridal saris (sometimes as nine stars, navtara).
- Paan booti — the heart-shaped betel leaf, a symbol of love and auspiciousness, and a bridal classic.
- Kamal booti — the lotus, India's enduring emblem of purity, echoing old temple carvings and murals.
- Bela boota — jasmine vines twining delicately across the silk.
- Genda boota — bold as the marigold of weddings and worship, festive even in zari.
- Tinphulia, chauphulia, panchphulia, satphulia — little flowers of three, four, five or seven petals, among the oldest floral forms on the loom.
- Kairi booti — the mango, also called ambi or paisley; the Banarasi kairi is broader and bolder than its slender Kashmiri cousin, a sign of fertility and growth.
- Khajuri booti — the date-palm pattern, sometimes paired with a sword (khajur talwar), long woven for patrons across the Arab world.
You'll find scattered bootis across our Muniya and Ashrafi Boota collections.
Janglas: forests on silk
Where bootis are scattered, a jangla is immersive — curling vines and blossoms that cover the whole saree like a living forest. It is one of the oldest and most opulent Banarasi layouts, classically woven in real zari and kept as an heirloom. The janglas in our Khinkhwab Gold collection are woven in genuine gold and silver zari.
Jals: the geometry of the net
A jal is a net — a lattice that spreads order across the saree, each opening holding a small motif, so the cloth reads like a woven palace screen. The forms are named for what they resemble:
- Charkhana — a checkerboard filled with flowers.
- Lahariya jal — wavy nets that ripple like the Ganga.
- Badrum jal — diamond-shaped lattices.
- Hira jal — sparkling like cut gemstones.
- Kamrakhi jal — shaped like the ridges of a starfruit.
- Bulbul-chashm jal — the ‘nightingale's eye’, a fine, delicate trellis.
Many jals trace back to the pierced marble jali screens of Mughal architecture — the play of light and shadow at Fatehpur Sikri or the Taj Mahal, translated into silk. Our Bulbul and Moonga silk pieces carry some of these delicate lattices.
Borders, kinaras and jhalars
The border frames the saree and sets its rhythm — weavers often say the kinara is where their imagination plays most freely.
- Kangana kinara — repeating bangles along the edge, an echo of bridal jewellery.
- Badla kinari — a gleaming band of metallic zari.
- Jhalar — ornamental frills, like the tasselled curtains of an old palace, swinging at the saree's edge.
Beyond the familiar: the narrative motifs
Banaras also weaves stories. The shikargah fills the cloth with hunting scenes of elephants, deer and falcons. The nauka vihar shows boat-rides on the Ganga, woven for local patrons. And the gyasar, or Tibetan kochin, is a rich brocade made for monasteries, alive with dragons, lotuses and Buddhist symbols — a reminder that Banaras has always woven for kings, brides, pilgrims and monks alike. You'll find some of our rarest, most narrative motifs in the Birds of Paradise collection, and the lotus blooming again in Kumudini.
What the motifs mean
Beyond their names, the great motifs each carry a quiet blessing:
- The peacock (mor) — grace, love and the joy of the monsoon.
- The lotus (kamal) — purity, beauty and the divine.
- The mango or paisley (kairi, kalka) — fertility, abundance and good fortune.
- The elephant (hathi) — royalty and good fortune.
- The wandering vine (jangla) — nature's endless abundance.
A living dictionary
At Khinkhwab our aim is not to archive these motifs but to let them live again — from loom to cloth to the women who drape them. A Banarasi speaks in motifs; to listen is to hear centuries of poetry, whispered in bootis, sung in janglas, and echoed in every border and jal. Begin with our handwoven Banarasi sarees.
Frequently asked questions
What is a booti in a Banarasi saree?
A booti is a small, repeated motif — a single flower, coin or leaf — scattered across the saree. A larger, more elaborate version, usually on the pallu or border, is called a boota.
What is the difference between a jangla and a jal?
A jangla is a dense, free-flowing all-over pattern of vines and flowers; a jal is an all-over pattern built on a net or trellis, with a motif set inside each opening of the lattice.
What is the asharfi or ‘dollar’ booti?
A round, coin-shaped motif named after the gold asharfi, woven as a symbol of prosperity. Colonial-era traders are said to have nicknamed it the ‘dollar booti’.
What is a shikargah motif?
A pictorial ‘hunting-ground’ motif that fills the saree with animals, birds and forest scenes. We explore it fully in our piece on the Shikargah.
Sources & further reading
Khinkhwab's own design archive and weavers' accounts; Tarannum Fatma Lari, Textiles of Banaras: Yesterday and Today (2010); Jaya Jaitly, Woven Textiles of Varanasi (2014).
