Aurangabad, Maharashtra — Craft Archive

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Chapter One

Ajanta — The Textile Archive in Stone

अजन्ता · कपड़े की पहली तस्वीर

The cave murals at Ajanta, painted between the 2nd century BCE and 6th century CE, are the most complete pictorial record of ancient Indian dress and textile we have. The painted figures wear draped garments with patterns, jewellery of specific forms, and hairstyles of recognisable types. What the weavers made — in cotton, silk, and dyed fibre — no longer exists as physical objects. But Ajanta preserved the images.

Art historians have read the Ajanta murals as a textile archive: the diagonal stripe, the floral repeat, the plain-weave bodice — these are documented in paint with the precision of someone who knew cloth from the inside. Some textile scholars argue that certain Paithani motifs can be traced directly to Ajanta patterns, suggesting a visual continuity across 1500 years.

At Ajanta, the painters were not painting cloth. They were painting people. But the cloth is so precisely observed — the weight of the drape, the sheen of the silk, the placement of the pattern — that the murals are our only window into the textile traditions of the ancient Deccan.

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Chapter Two

Himroo — The Affordable Brocade

हिमरू · डेक्कन का रेशम

Himroo is a cotton-silk blend fabric with a raised woven pattern — developed in Aurangabad as an affordable alternative to the Persian kinkhab brocades that Mughal nobles preferred. The word is derived from the Persian hum-roo, meaning "similar-faced" — a fabric that resembles something more expensive than it is.

The weave creates a surface where the pattern floats above the ground fabric on supplementary weft threads. The result is a textile with a visible texture — soft ridges of pattern on a smoother background. Traditional motifs include the mango paisley, the flowering vine, and geometric borders.

Himroo was invented to be compared to something else and found acceptable. Over time it became itself — no longer an imitation but an original, with its own grammar of pattern and its own community of weavers who know no other cloth.

Himroo weave
Cotton-silk blend
Persian-influenced motifs
Paithani variant forms
Aurangabad silk

Aurangabad: Landscape — Aurangabad — landscapeWikimedia Commons

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Chapter Three

Bidri — Silver on Dark Metal

बिदरी · अंधेरे में चाँदी

Bidri metalwork — bidriware — is one of India's most immediately recognisable craft forms. The technique: a zinc-copper alloy base is cast, shaped, and blackened with a soil paste; then silver wire is hammered into incised channels; then the piece is polished so the silver stands in bright contrast against the matte black surface.

Bidri originated in Bidar, capital of the Bahmani Sultanate in the 15th century. Aurangabad became a secondary centre under the Mughals, who patronised the craft for luxury objects — hookahs, vases, trays, and jewellery boxes inlaid with silver floral and arabesque patterns.

Bidriware is a craft of contrast. The metal is dark; the inlay is bright. The ground recedes; the pattern comes forward. The technique makes visible what the base material hides. Silver always speaks, even against black.

Aurangabad: The craft — Aurangabad — the craftWikimedia Commons

Aurangabad: Material — Aurangabad — materialWikimedia Commons