Chapter 2: History and Origins

Kasuti's exact origins cannot be pinned to a single date or founding event — like most domestic textile crafts, it developed gradually and was rarely documented by the people who practised it. What the historical record does support is summarized below.

The Chalukya Period

Craft historians and design-institute sources consistently trace Kasuti's roots to the Chalukya era, a dynasty that ruled large parts of the Deccan region between roughly the 6th and 12th centuries CE. Some sources place the style's emergence as early as the 7th century, in the Dharwad region of western Karnataka. The connection is inferential rather than documentary: Chalukyan and later temple architecture in the region — with its stepped gopura towers, chariots used in temple processions, and decorative motifs — is understood to have directly inspired the geometric vocabulary that embroiderers translated onto cloth.

The Mysore Kingdom and the '64 Arts'

By the 17th century, under the Mysore Kingdom (Wadiyar dynasty), Kasuti had become formalised enough to be counted among the traditional "64 arts" (chausath kala) that women of the royal court were expected to master. This detail — repeated across multiple independent sources — is one of the more reliable historical anchors for Kasuti's status as a recognised, cultivated skill rather than a purely rustic pastime, at least within court and elite circles. Sources agree this expectation extended to both women of high standing and common women alike, who were expected to be able to adorn a saree with Kasuti motifs skilfully.

A Craft Born of the Loom

Karnataka has long been a major centre of silk and cotton handloom weaving. Several sources describe Kasuti as having grown out of this weaving culture directly: women in weaving households used leftover or discarded silk threads from the loom to embroider their own garments, rather than purchasing thread specifically for embroidery. This origin story helps explain why Kasuti developed as a counted, grid-based technique in the first place — it emerged alongside, and in the same houses as, the counted structure of handloom weaving.

Geographic Spread

The craft is most closely associated with the north Karnataka districts of Bijapur (Vijayapura), Dharwad, Belgaum (Belagavi), and Hubballi, and with the town of Ilkal (Bagalkot district), famous for the handwoven Ilkal saree that Kasuti is traditionally worked upon. Craft-documentation sources also name Kalghatgi, Gadag, Mundargi, and Haveri as additional, smaller production-and-retail localities within this same north Karnataka cluster, alongside the larger centres of Dharwad and Hubballi. The tradition also extends across the state border into the Maharashtra towns of Miraj, Sangli, and Jamkhandi, reflecting the historically fluid cultural region of the northern Deccan rather than modern state boundaries.

🖼️ IMAGE PLACEHOLDER — MAP-01 Type: Custom illustration (map) — delivered as /assets/img/map-geographic-spread.svg Content: A simplified map of northern Karnataka and adjoining Maharashtra marking Bijapur/Vijayapura, Dharwad, Belgaum/Belagavi, Hubballi, Ilkal, Bagalkot, Gadag, Mundargi, Kalghatgi, Haveri, Miraj, Sangli, and Jamkhandi. Suggested size: 1200 × 1200 px Format: SVG + PNG export Caption: "The traditional Kasuti belt: north Karnataka and adjoining Maharashtra." Alt text: "Map marking the towns of the traditional Kasuti embroidery region across north Karnataka and southern Maharashtra." Status: ✅ Delivered as a custom SVG asset with this project

Literary References

Some sources point to literary references to Kasuti-like embroidery dating back to at least the 15th century, suggesting the practice — or at least embroidered adornment of saris in this region — was already an expected part of a woman's dress well before the Mysore court's "64 arts" formalisation. As with much of Kasuti's early history, these references are cited by secondary sources rather than examined here as primary texts, and should be treated as suggestive rather than conclusively dated.