Tussar sari and stoleWomen
Woven from wild silk with a natural gold-brown colour and a slubbed texture, dyed or left undyed, often with a plain body and a woven or printed border.
Worn for: Formal and everyday
Anga & Seemanchal · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Dress and textiles
Bhagalpur clothes a good part of India without most of it knowing — Bhagalpuri tussar is the standard slub-textured silk of the Indian wardrobe, and much of what is sold under the name elsewhere passes through this one town. Everyday dress follows the transition: dhoti and sari on the Bihar side, lungi and Bengali-style sari drape as you move east, and a strongly marked Muslim wardrobe through Seemanchal.
What is worn
Dhoti, kurta and gamchhaMen
Cotton, giving way to the lungi in the eastern and Muslim-majority districts.
Worn for: Everyday and ritual
Sari, drawn in the eastern styleWomen
The drape changes as you cross the region — the pallu moving to the left shoulder and the pleating loosening towards Bengal.
Worn for: Everyday
Lungi, kurta and topiMen, Seemanchal
The standard dress of the Surjapuri and Bengali-speaking Muslim districts, and visibly distinct from the wardrobe an hour west.
Worn for: Everyday and Friday
Weaves and textiles
Bhagalpur tussar silkGI tagBhagalpur, Banka
Wild silk reeled and woven at Bhagalpur from cocoons reared in the surrounding forests, distinguished by its natural gold colour and irregular slub. Registered as a geographical indication, and the basis of tens of thousands of looms in and around the city.
Ghicha and matka silkBhagalpur
Yarn spun rather than reeled from pierced or damaged cocoons, giving a coarser, textured cloth much used for furnishing and stoles.
Katihar and Purnia juteKatihar, Purnia
Jute grown, retted and milled across the interfluve — a crop that made this belt an industrial region under the Calcutta jute economy and left it exposed when that collapsed.
Jewellery
Silver hansuli and payalNose ring and jhumkaConch-shell and lac bangles, in the Bengali-influenced districtsTikuli, the forehead disc
Traditional dress of Anga & Seemanchal — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (7)