Benares Silks Are Both Expensive and Prized : Indian Weavers of Varanasi Keep Age-Old Craft Alive

The loom’s steady click filled the room as the weaver’s deft hands pushed a shuttle between threads hanging from a machine that looked to be from medieval times.

Connected to the stick was a fine thread, almost invisible. With a flick of his wrist and a push of the foot pedal, the weaver added it to hundreds of other threads as he practiced one of the world’s great arts--creating the finely woven silks of Varanasi, known as Benares silks for the city’s pre-independence name.

A Benares silk sari is to the Indian bride what the finest crystal or china is to Americans. It is a symbol of luxury and a thing of beauty, with glittering colors interlaced with delicately woven flowers or geometric patterns in silver or gold. In fashion-conscious New Delhi or Bombay, its shimmering folds catch even the most jaded eye.

High-Priced Works of Art

As with other works of art, Benares silks are expensive. In a country where the average annual income is still about $200, the cost of even the simplest Benares hand-woven sari is $100 to $135, and fine ones can cost $260 to $325, a month’s salary for a well-established middle-class Indian--and much more than that for the average family.

The average weaver, however, will earn only $2.50 or $3.50 a day for his labors.

Here in India’s heartland, in a city said to be the oldest inhabited religious center in the world, weaving is a way of life.

Far from New Delhi’s fine hotels and diplomatic receptions, thousands of Varanasi men sit at their old looms, their fingers moving swiftly between the wefts as their wives prepare silk threads and their sons watch and learn. The men, in dark, cramped rooms--sweating in summer, freezing in winter--do what their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers did: craft fine silks that adorn the rich and famous of India.

A Long History

Four hundred years ago, powerful Mogul princes wore jackets woven of silk and gold by weavers here, while ladies in royal harems wrapped themselves in delicate, diaphanous brocades. And for centuries before the Moguls, wives of wealthy Hindu merchants provided a ready market for Benares silks.

The financial demands and pressures of modern life have virtually destroyed traditional crafts in many countries, and even in tradition-bound India, many of the old crafts have only a few practitioners. Even for the silk weavers in Varanasi, much has changed.

In the old days, a master craftsman was designer and creator, carrying in his head the tens of thousands of steps necessary to weave a single piece.

Today, for most of the craftsmen, predesigned punch cards hooked to the top of the loom create the design, while the weaver brings only his weaving skills to the creation. The cards save time and allow specialization, but they also limit weaving techniques and designs.

Weaves a Small Version

Jaafar Ali is a holdover from the old school, a man who sketches a fine design and then painstakingly weaves a small version to guide the weavers who will make the six-yard-long sari.

“I learned from my grandfather, and he learned from those before,” he said, as his two teen-age grandsons, Nasir Ahmad and Mohammed Arif, watched him work. The boys started with him when they were 12 or 13, and in four or five years will have learned enough to work on their own.

The weaving community is a close one, and most of its members view modern concepts of schooling as unnecessary. Instead, as ancient guilds once did, the weavers teach their own. “We are weavers. We like to teach our children our craft. That is why they don’t go to school. If they went to school, how could they have time to learn the craft?” Ali asked.

Seeming Anomaly

Ali, like most weavers here, is Muslim, a seeming anomaly in Varanasi, considered by Hindus to be their holiest city. But it is logical when viewed against the backdrop of Indian history.

When the Moguls swept across India, they brought Islam with them. “The Mogul princes were the patrons, the people who bought the finely woven silks and brocades, so the weavers naturally became Muslims as well,” said B. Chakravarty, a department head at the nearby government-run weavers’ center.

While some Varanasi weavers are now using more modern methods, efforts are being made at the weavers’ center and other institutes to revive some ancient techniques all but lost.

Traditions are being relearned in part because affluent Indians want to purchase items made by such methods, and the popular Festival of India that has traveled internationally to celebrate Indian culture has sparked interest in Indian silks in other countries as well.