If you can read a Baluchari pallu, you can locate the saree by the decade. The Mahabharata pallus belong to one cluster of looms; the Ramayana pallus to another; the Krishna-Leela pallus to a third. Here is the short reader.
The Bishnupur looms first carried mythological pallus in the late eighteenth century, when the Mallas commissioned narrative cloth for court occasions. The earliest surviving piece — held in the Indian Museum, Calcutta — is a Mahabharata Baluchari from circa 1790. The Krishna-Leela pallus, more domestic in tone, came in around 1830. The Ramayana pallus, a much smaller cluster, are mostly twentieth century — they were revived in the 1960s as part of the post-Partition handloom programme. When you stand in front of a Baluchari, the pallu reads in three layers. The outermost border carries a stylised vine — kalka, paisley, or a fish motif specific to Bishnupur. Within that, the narrative panels: between two and seven scenes from the chosen epic, woven in supplementary weft. At the corner, the weaver's mark — three small flowers in a triangle, signed in zari. If the corner mark is missing, the saree is either pre-1947 or it is not a Baluchari. The motifs themselves are read right-to-left, the way a Bengali manuscript reads. The chariot scenes are the most ambitious — the horses' manes are individually picked, one shuttle pass per mane. The dancing-Krishna scenes are easier; they're stencilled from a punch-card. The Sita-walking-into-fire scene is rare and hand-drawn from the weaver's memory; no two are identical. Next time you're in front of a Baluchari, look for the chariot first. If the chariot has six horses, you're in front of the Karna-Arjuna duel from the Mahabharata. If the chariot is empty and the pallu shows a tree, you're in front of the Krishna-under-the-kadamba moment. If the pallu shows a bridge of monkeys, you're in front of the Ramayana — and almost certainly post-1965, when the bridge motif was recovered from a single surviving manuscript at the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. The saree is, in this sense, an archive — bound in silk, signed at the corner, eight days of weaving per panel.