Maheshwari Sari and Fabric

      The city of Maheshwar, the ancient name of which was ahishmati was founded by the King Mahishman of the Som dynasty. It was built as a capital and pilgrimage centre by the pious Rani  Ahilyabai Holkar (31 May 1725 – 13 August 1795) (ruled 11 ecember1767–13 August 1795), of Indore whose own palace lay at one end of the temple complex. It is said that she settled a number of weavers here from Surat to weave saris for the royal household and to present to the Peshwa kings,visiting dignitaries, along with yellow turban cloths for the men in the army and the red ones for the mahajans, traders and nobility. She had grown up in Ahmed nagar, another  important handloom centre and with her active support Maheshwar became well known for the 80s to 300s count cotton saris and turbans with zari in the borderSI. Since she was not partial to floral motifs, the austere queen commanded the weavers to design only geometrical motifs. The weavers drew inspiration from the detailings of Maheshwar fort and the ornate stone carvings come up on the temple side of the complex. It became virtually an elaborate design directory for  them,CW.

     A range of natural dyes once used in Maheshwar included Sattalu rang, red of the Sattalu plant for the extraction of which there were ‘Sattal’ factories. Brown was obtained from Harada and yellow from the Pallas flower. Aal or Madder was used till 1943 when it was replaced by fast chemical colours from Germany. This was in turn distrupted in 1945 by the second world war. Maheshwari saris suffered a loss of reputation as the weavers began to use non-fast  colours which bled especially from the selvedge and endpiece on to the body.This led to an acute crisis in the Maheshwari market between 1951-53SI.

      The weavers brought and settled in Maheshwar by Rani Ahilyabai Holkar were the  Maarus, Salvis, Momins,Julahas, Khangars and Kolis. Of these the Maaru is the largest, originally said to have come from Surat.They consider themselves part of Khatri clan and are thus called Maaru Khatris. 30 to 40 years ago they used to weave and sell independently. They went as far as Amravati, Nagpur, Kolhapur, Pune and Baroda.The Salvis also came from Surat but in this case via Burhanpur.
      The Salvi women provided the service of brush sizing cotton yarn for the weaving community as a whole in Maheshwar.
   Many Salvi families left this town when work deminished and the quality of work in turn deteriorated and finally the sizing process itself was eliminated as it was no longer economically viable in comparison to silk weaving. Silk when it is streched out, does not require as much care as cotton when leasing the warp threads. Salvi women were once well known for their leasing of fine count cotton yarn on nimble finger-tipsSI.

      The master weave-traders of Maheshwar are of the generation that entered the trade when their fathers had already given up weaving in the early 50s and selling  by the Pheri system in the cities of Maharashtra.They were largely dealing with pure cotton Maheshwaris till 1970 and since then switched entirely to silk in the warp. In their view, ever since they lost support among the royalty of  Gwalior, Indore, Baroda and other princely states in neighbouring Maharashtra, the value of the Maheshwari seems to have fallenSI.

    Once silk was introduced in the early 40s, the Garbh-reshmi saris became famous, with a variation of silk checks on a cotton ground, both in the warp and weft.The problems of cotton sizing  made it easier for most  weavers to adopt a standard silk warp, cotton weft format in the 1950s referred to as the Neem-reshmiSI.

     Originally pitlooms were used for Maheshwari weaving since historical times. These heavy, wooden looms are installed inside a pit, about 3 feet deep. The weaver has to sit on the wall of this pit, with his legs inside. The looms are permanently installed in these pits and have hardly moved from their place for many yearsAI.

       The main difference between Chanderi and Maheshwari saris is, Maheshwari’s geometrical motifs.The other differences are though both have plain body, the Chanderi saris have buti eaving in the body and the Maheshwaris don’t and the Maheshwari saris have checks and stripes in the body and the Chanderis don’t. an

The Mahehwar  weaver used many natural colours and the Chanderi weaver used only saffron.

The Chanderi saris were still finer muslins comparing to Maheshwarisan.

      Once an all cotton weaving centre the Maheshwari like Chanderi had handled upto 300 counts cotton but today there is not a single loom for the pure cotton sari. The predicament of Maheshwar is similar to Chanderi, nsofar as it has lured the highlyskilled fine cotton weaver in to weaving with silk for more wagesSI.

Sources


SI  -----  Saris of India,Madhyapradhesh, Rita Kapur Chishti & Amba Sanyal,
Wiley Eastern Ltd. & Amr Vastra Kosh
CW ---- www.CopperWiki.org -------- CopperWiki is a community based collaboration to build world’s largest repository of information about living consciously.
AI--------------www.aiacaonline.org ( All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association)
an-------------------author’s note