From the fine cloth that wrapped the Buddha to the looms still working in Varanasi today — the long, astonishing story behind every Banarasi saree.
Almost everything we make at Khinkhwab begins in the same place: a wooden pit loom in a narrow lane of Varanasi, where a weaver throws his shuttle across silk warp exactly as his father and grandfather did. We always knew the craft was old. What we did not realise was how old — until we started reading into where it comes from. The history of Banaras weaving has been traced by textile historians across the ancient texts, temple sculpture and travellers' records, and it runs back not by centuries but by millennia. This is the story they tell — the history behind every Banarasi saree we sell.
A city older than its own legends
Kashi — the older, sacred name for Banaras — is counted among India's seven holiest cities, the ones believed to grant moksha: Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar, Kashi, Kanchi, Ujjain and Dwarka. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, spoken of in the same breath as Jerusalem, Rome and Athens, and it has held an unbroken thread of culture for some three thousand years. And almost as long as there has been a Kashi, there has been Kashi cloth.
The cloth that wrapped the Buddha
Some of the earliest praise of Banaras cloth is also the most moving. A commentator on the Mahaparinirvana Sutta records that when the Buddha passed, his body was wrapped in a fine cloth woven in Kashi — a muslin so soft and finely knotted that it would not even absorb oil. The Buddhist Jataka tales, our richest window into ancient Indian life, return to Kashi again and again as a city of weavers and traders, its cloth — kashikavastra — prized for its glitter and fineness. In the Anguttar Nikaya, even the worn clothes of Kashi are described as too beautiful to discard, kept instead to wrap jewels or stored away in boxes of perfume.
Sita's dowry, Draupadi's choice
The great epics dress their heroes in it too. In the Ramayana, kshauma — a fine silk — appears in Sita's dowry and on the bodies of Rama's family; in the Mahabharata, kshauma is named as Draupadi's preferred cloth, something costly and rare. By the Mauryan age, Kautilya's Arthashastra lists kshauma from Kashi among the finest textiles of the land. The grammarian Patanjali, in his Mahabhashya, noted something our weavers would still recognise: Kashi cloth was priced not by its size, but by the sheer quality of its workmanship.
The first gold in the weave — the birth of zari
If you have ever wondered when gold first entered Banaras silk, the literature points to the early medieval centuries. By the seventh to ninth centuries, writers such as Damodar Gupta — in his Kuttaneetam — describe kanakgarbhita, cloth literally woven with gold wire, as the favoured dress of the aristocracy. A tenth-century work, Somadeva's Yashastilak Champu, speaks of girdles that shone like gold. This is the ancestor of zari, the metallic thread that defines a Banarasi to this day — and by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the very word zarkasi had become a synonym for it.
We can almost see these fabrics. In the Gupta period, Kashi was famous for cloth so thin and transparent it was likened to the slough of a snake — and you can still read it in the murals of Ajanta and in Gupta-era Buddha statues whose drapery is discernible only by its pleats. In one Ajanta scene the king of Kashi is shown worshipping golden swans, dressed in a thin dhoti and a narrow dupatta. The same era gave us the names of the weaves: pushpapatta brocade, praised in Bana's Harshacharita, and the early hunting-scene brocade that lives on in our shikargah sarees.
The Mughal golden age
Banaras reached a peak under the Mughals. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its turbans, scarves and brocades were considered fit for the imperial court. The English traveller Ralph Fitch, who arrived in 1583, marvelled at the scale of the city's cloth trade and the turbans being woven for the Mughals. The French jeweller Tavernier, visiting in 1665, described weavers selling their own cloth directly to buyers in the caravanserais — cutting out the middlemen — their silks and brocades first stamped by official contractors. The Italian Manucci, in his Storia do Mogor, wrote that Banaras cloth worked in gold and silver was exported across the world; another visitor recorded that even the canopy over the Shiva lingam at the Kashi Vishwanath temple was heavy brocade. The weaves of that age are the direct forebears of today's katan silk Banarasis.
Plunder, decline and revival
The story is not all glory. Through the medieval invasions — Mahmud Ghazni's raids, the plunder of Banaras brocades by Ahmad Niyaltgeen, the upheavals of the twelfth century — the weaving trade suffered badly, and at times nearly fell silent. What kept it alive were the weavers themselves: the Muslim weaving families of mohallas like Madanpura, and communities for whom the loom was both livelihood and identity. There's a lovely origin story here: that Banaras brocade was founded by seven weaving families — the Sat Gharva — who travelled west from Persia and settled in Madanpura, carrying their silk-and-gold techniques with them. Madanpura became famous for its fine, delicate kimkhab, while the weavers of neighbouring Alaipura built their name on experiment and innovation — a rivalry that pushed the craft forward. (The poet-saint Kabir, remember, was a Banaras weaver by trade.) The craft even had its own patron — Banaras textile was spoken of as the work of Lakshmi herself, the goddess of wealth. From the eighteenth century, Maratha and Rajput patronage and rulers such as Ishwari Narayan Singh helped it recover, and by the nineteenth century it was flourishing once more, with a Banaras census of the period counting more than three thousand Muslim weavers in silk and zari brocade alone.
Banaras enters the modern record
By 1847 the English traveller Mrs Colin Mackenzie judged Banaras zari brocade superior to anything woven in Europe, describing gold- and silver-thread bedsheets and scarves made for the elite. At the great Delhi craft exhibition of 1902–03, George Watt's official catalogue named Banaras the country's foremost centre for zari and brocade, sorting its cloth into four families: pure gold- and silver-thread work; silk brocade, or amru; the lighter baftas; and embroidered silks — many using flattened gold thread called taar-badala. The 1909 Banaras Gazetteer counted some twenty-three thousand people in cotton and twelve thousand in silk and zari work, weaving fine muslins like tanzeb and the needle-ornamented zari-zamdani. And when Queen Elizabeth II visited Varanasi in 1961, it was silk and zari cloth that topped the gifts presented to her.
One detail is impossible to forget: around two centuries ago, a handful of Banaras weavers were entrusted with weaving the cover for the Kaaba at Mecca — eight yards long, worked in pure gold and silver thread with verses of the Quran, so painstaking that three weavers needed ten days to finish a single yard. That is the standard this city set for itself.
Why this history lives in every Khinkhwab saree
What strikes us most is the continuity. The kshauma of the epics, the kanakgarbhita of the Gupta courts, the brocades of the Mughal caravanserais — these are not separate stories. They are one craft, handed down loom to loom, in the same city, for three thousand years. When you wear a handwoven Banarasi, you are wearing the latest line of a tradition that dressed the Buddha and the Mughal court alike. That unbroken thread is exactly what we try to protect at Khinkhwab — by buying directly from the weavers of Varanasi, and by keeping the handloom, the real zari, and the old motifs alive for one more generation.
Frequently asked questions
How old is the Banarasi saree?
Banaras has been a celebrated weaving centre for at least two to three thousand years. References to its fine cloth appear in the Buddhist Jataka tales and in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and an unbroken line of weaving can be traced through the Gupta, Mughal and modern periods right up to the looms working in Varanasi today.
Was the Buddha really wrapped in Banaras cloth?
According to a commentator on the Mahaparinirvana Sutta, yes — after the Buddha's passing his body was wrapped in fine cloth woven in Kashi (Banaras), a muslin so soft and finely knotted that it would not absorb oil. It is one of the earliest recorded tributes to the quality of Banaras textiles.
When did zari (gold-thread) weaving begin in Banaras?
Cloth woven with gold wire — kanakgarbhita — is described in texts from as early as the seventh to ninth centuries as the dress of the aristocracy. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the word zarkasi was used as a synonym for zari, and Banaras was firmly established as India's leading centre for gold- and silver-thread weaving.
What is the oldest name for Banarasi cloth?
Ancient literature refers to Kashi's superior cloth by names such as kashikavastra and kashikuttama, and to a fine silk called kshauma. These appear across the Jatakas, the epics and works like Kautilya's Arthashastra.
Why is Varanasi so famous for sarees?
Varanasi (Banaras) sat at the meeting point of religion, learning and trade, which made it a natural hub for fine textiles for thousands of years. Royal and, later, Mughal patronage drove demand for its brocades, turbans and zari work, and generations of weaving families kept the skills alive — so the city's reputation for the finest handwoven silk has simply never been broken.
Sources & further reading
The history above is documented across the early literary and historical record: the Buddhist Jataka tales and the commentary on the Mahaparinirvana Sutta; the Ramayana and Mahabharata; Kautilya's Arthashastra; Patanjali's Mahabhashya; Bana's Harshacharita; Damodar Gupta's Kuttaneetam; Somadeva's Yashastilak Champu; the travel accounts of Ralph Fitch (1583), Tavernier (1665), Manucci and Peter Mundi (1632); George Watt's catalogue of the Delhi Exhibition (1902–03); and H.R. Nevil's Banaras Gazetteer (1909).
For readers who want to go further, a few standard works on Banaras and Indian textiles:
- Tarannum Fatma Lari, Textiles of Banaras: Yesterday and Today (Indica Books, Varanasi, 2010)
- Rai Anand Krishna & Vijay Krishna, Banaras Brocades (Crafts Museum, New Delhi, 1966)
- Jaya Jaitly, Woven Textiles of Varanasi (2014)
- B.C. Mohanty, Brocaded Fabrics of India (Calico Museum, Ahmedabad, 1984)
- Linda Lynton, The Sari (Thames & Hudson, 1995)
- Dream of Weaving: Study & Documentation of Banaras Sarees and Brocades (Textiles Committee, Government of India, 2007)
