Narayanpet Sarees

Narayanpet Saree

Now in Telangana, Narayanpet is a town which, till quite recently, lay in Andhra Pradesh near the Karnataka border. It is believed that its tradition of weaving arose sometime in the 17th century: Maharashtra's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is reputed to have brought some Maharashtrian weavers to Narayanpet, who brought with them a tradition of weaving Narayanpeth sarees. Today, Narayanpeth sarees from Maharashtra are all but indistinguishable from the Narayanpet sarees of Andhra Pradesh.

Contemporary Narayanpet sarees may be woven in silk, cotton, or silk-cotton. They have borders of between 3 and 5.5 inches which run along both sides of each saree, and endpieces which are about 60 cm long and tend to feature simple striped designs. The borders, which usually have zari 'ribbons' woven into them, are of equal breadth on both sides, feature a small temple design (especially when the sarees are woven in silk), and contrast with the colour of the (often checked) field of the saree. Cotton sarees are almost always checked while silk sarees may either be checked or plain. Also, while the endpieces of silk sarees have stripes that end in arrow-like designs (called 'Theni pallu'), the stripes on the end-pieces of cotton sarees tend to be block-like.

It isn't clear when or how weavers were brought from Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh: at the time of Shivaji's birth around 1630 AD, the Deccan was held by three Islamic sultanates: Bijapur, Ahmednagar, and Golconda. By the time of his death in 1680, he had done much to consolidate power in the Deccan in Maratha hands, and had, in 1677, signed a friendship treaty with Golconda. It is possible that it was around this time that the Andhra Narayanpet saree began to be woven.