(Views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of the author.)

Between 321 BC and 850 AD, India was one of the world's great civilizations, existing in parallel with the Roman Empire in the west and the Chinese Empire in the east. Chandragupta Maurya founded the first large empire in India, which included present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. During this period, trade links to both the east and west were well-established, with textiles and spices being among the most prominent trade items originating from India.

Interestingly, due to the prevailing climatic conditions in India, there was less emphasis on cut and stitched garments. Cotton was first grown and used in India, and Indians excelled in the art of embellishing cloth. Gold and silver were commonly used to adorn their clothing.

In the ancient Indian costumes of the Vedic and post-Vedic period (1500 BCE to 350 BCE), both men and women typically wore three articles of clothing. These were not cut and sewn garments but rectangular pieces of beautiful textiles.

The first piece was the Antariya, similar to a loincloth, which could be draped in various ways. It could be wrapped around with pleats in front, taken between the legs in a kaccha style, or have the loose end pleated like a fan. The fabric could range from sheer to thick, depending on the wearer.

The second piece was the Uttariya, which functioned like a mantle and covered the upper part of the body. It could be worn across the back, resting on the shoulders and left to fall freely on the forearms. Sometimes, women wore two Uttariyas, with one beautifully draped on the head and the other across the arms. Importantly, there was typically no covering for the breasts during this period.

The third piece of clothing was the kayabandh, which served as a belt to hold the Antariya in place. The kayabandh could be tied in various styles, such as being wrapped around the body two or three times and secured with different kinds of knots. Sculptures from this period often depict the Antariya being tied below the navel, emphasizing the contours of the female form. Both men and women adorned themselves with ample jewelry and flowers.

During the Mauryan period, these basic articles of clothing remained largely the same. Chandragupta Maurya, who founded the Maurya dynasty, had connections with the Greek Selucid court, which introduced an exotic flavor to court life with foreign inhabitants wearing their own distinctive costumes.

Furthermore, India had trade links with the Romans, and women in Rome began to prefer lighter and softer materials such as cotton from India and, most notably, silks, which were brought to Rome through various trade routes, including those of the Indian and Egyptian traders.

Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador at the Mauryan court, writes in Indika about the riches of the Mauryan court and the prevailing styles of dress. It is around this period that we begin to see the changes in the indigenous costume of the people of Indian subcontinent. We see a strong Greeco-Roman flavor in the costumes.


Though most of the women are shown bare-chested in the sculptures, and so are men, the literature of the period reveals that married women wore a breast band, to cover their breasts. It was known as stanmasuka or Pratidhi, which is similar to the mammillare worn by the Roman women. We come across another term for Antariya known as nivi or nivi-bandha. There is no reference to wearing of the lower garment in the style of a modern saree. Brij Bhushan 1958. Although we come across some sculptures wearing a saree like garment, but mostly there were two separate garments. In many parts of India we still have a two piece sari. 


The sari with its endless variety in texture and in colour, in layout and in decoration, is the prominent female costume of India Bhattacharyya 1995. Sari is regarded as the traditional costume for Indian women. When did saree come to be as it is today is debated by many scholars. Some believe that existed from the Aryan times, female households wore a kanchuka (tunic) and a sari. The dhotis were worn in different styles and individual creativity was reflected in various forms of sari draping around the body. Vinay Bahl


If you look at the clothes of a Roman woman during the time of Roman Empire - you see something more of a sari as worn later in India. The saree as we see today has a main body and a rectangular area towards the end which hangs lose from the shoulder, incidentally this is known as the palla.


We come across the term palla while studying Roman costume, whereas this term finds no mention in ancient Indian costume. A few historians believe that the modern saree was a result of the Roman influence. The indigenous antarya and uttariya were combined together along with the palla to give rise to the saree as we see today, which we regard as the traditional costume of India.

A rectangular piece of fabric varying from 5 to 9 meters in length and almost 1.5 meters in width, with a plain or decorated body and a decorated end piece known as the palla or anchal, is the quintessential garment of the Indian woman, known as the saree. From Kashmir to Kanya Kumari, it is the saree which binds the Indian woman, the style of drapery varies from one state to another, and so do the motifs and styles of weaving.


The Choli which is like a fitted blouse came as an addition during the Gupta period (early 4th Century). The Choli probably came to be because of primarily two reasons, one of them was modesty, the other was the influence of cultures from the west. The evolution from unstitched to stitched garment has an inescapable logic when it evolves for purely functional purposes. In case of Germanic races, it was protection from the cold, and in India, it served the purpose of modesty, Alkazi 2006.


Bibliography:

  • Watson Francis, A Concise history of India, Thames and Hudson,1979
  • Alkazi Roshen, Ancient Indian Costume Art Heritage, New Delhi 2006
  • Vinay Bahl, Shifting Boundaries of Nativity and Modernity in South Asian Womens Clothes, Dialectical Anthropology   Volume 1 / 1975 - Volume 35 / 2011
  • Tarlo Emma, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India, Chicago University Press, 1996.
  • Boucher Francois, A History of Costume in the West Thames and Hudson 1998
  • Bhattacharyya A.K., A Pageant of Indian Culture, (Art and Archaeology) Vol. I, Abhinav Publications, 1995
  • Brij Bhushan Jamila, Costume and Textiles of India, Taraporevalas Treasure House of Books Bombay, 1958


This article was originally published in the Costume Textile and Fashion Blog written by Toolika Gupta.