WOMAN’S DRESS
Dress in India can be comprised within a few typical forms. Fashion,
which in Europe is so frequently variable and occupies itself with
line and contour, is in India far more stable and persistent. Fashion
exists, of course, as in every land where women live and grow and
change. But it busies itself rather with what may be called the
accidents than with the essentials of attire. In the choice of colour
the women of India display a rich variety; and selection, though less
subject to sudden and violent alteration, is governed by those moods of
temperament which are generalized under the name of fashion. No less
operative is changing temperament upon the designs of jewelry and the
choice of gems to set in gold. Even in respect of the textures which
women choose for their clothes, there are collective changes of mood
and mode to be noticed. But in point of dress and adornment, as in most
other activities, in India there is a governance by authority and a
quasi-religious sanction which is foreign to the strongly individualist
tempers of the West. The shapes and to some extent even the colour of
dress and the design and manner of wearing jewelry are among those
distinctive marks of social rank and ceremonial purity, in a word of
caste, which are guarded jealously as if almost sacrosanct. It is only
in the additions and embellishments permitted upon the normal habits
of the caste that the human personality finds room for self-display. A
woman must first of all make her dress conform to the approved habits
of her class. That done, she is free to express her own tastes and
talents within the range of such permissible colours and superfluous
ornaments as do not alter the essential lines of her costume.
The interest of dress centres mainly upon the human psychology of
which it is one among many other expressions. And it is not a little
surprising that this inner and living bond has so often escaped the
writers who have made costume their subject. Dress, regarded as form
and colour only, has no doubt its own value to the painter. Like
every arrangement in which selected hues or lines are grouped for the
creation of a new beauty, it has an emotional appeal apart from its
meaning or history. The uses of drapery in sculpture and the sensuous
pleasure given by rich velvets and gold brocades in the paintings of
Titian or Veronese are instances of the fascination of clothes, merely
on their decorative side. But an intenser interest comes to being when
dress is known to be also the expression of a character that in one
sense may be called individual but may with more reality be regarded as
part of a vast national life.
For by its very nature dress is a means selected to heighten the
attraction of the sexes for each other. The use of clothes as a
protection against the extremes of climate is merely secondary and is
even something of a reproach to natural adaptation. It is as adornment,
and in its purpose of attraction, that it has its real and ultimate
meaning. That dress comes to be used incidentally to preserve modesty
does not affect its primary purpose. Modesty itself is one of the
secondary properties of love and one of its most powerful weapons. But
it is when mankind becomes sophisticated that the value and function of
modesty are properly understood; and it is then that dress and ornament
are so designed as to combine their direct and, under the guise of
modesty, their indirect attractions. It follows, therefore, that in any
people the use of the means of attraction which are supplied by dress
and jewelry must correspond to the attributes of the persons whom it is
desired to attract. If the dress did not conform to some inbred desire
in those who see it, it could have no power to please; even it might
become repellent. But similarity of birth and training tends to mould
the majority of each nation to something of an average, and it is after
all as a response to the desires of the average person that dress is
designed. It responds, therefore, to the psychology of the people in
which it is found.
Looked at from this aspect, the fundamental difference between the
costumes of European and of Indian women becomes at once more deeply
significant. In Europe, during the long centuries that have succeeded
the fall of Rome, one quality above all has clung to dress, that
is, _bizarrerie_ of form. The Teutonic barbarians who uprooted the
Mediterranean civilizations and imposed in their place those tribal
feudalisms and customary rules from which Europe is not yet fully
freed, seem whether from their primitive particularism or their
inborn brutality to have largely been lacking in the sense of form.
Symmetry and simplicity were conceptions beyond their northern brains
and outside their temperament. Even to this day the German (who
with least admixture of blood or education represents the primeval
Teutonic savage) is hardly able by any effort of reason to comprehend
the meaning of these words. In essence, it would seem, his mind is
formless, vague, amorphous. So in their buildings, the Goths could
find no use for purity of form. What they sought always and with a
great effectiveness achieved was a shape, or rather a conglomeration of
shapes, complicated and exaggerated, with lengthy spires and cumbrous
altitudes, that should be curious, awful, and _bizarre_. They never
sought to soothe the mind. Their churches do not so much attract
attention, but capture it, as it were, by an audacious ravishment.
And as this purpose was congenial to their own psychology, so did
they win their effect among their own and kindred peoples. Similarly
their women, if they were to excite the desires of men habituated to
bloodshed and the strong stress of war, had to take their attention by
storm, with the aid of the fantastic and unexpected in their costume.
Without the subtlety of imagination and finesse to excel by a fine
harmony or a graceful nicety, they were forced upon the extravagant
and exuberant. The lines of their dress were not designed to be
congruous with the human body or to agree in beautiful drapery, but
were meant rather to amaze the onlooker by a sudden onslaught upon his
vision. At any cost they were to be effective--to produce, that is, an
immediate effect by the strangeness and extravagance of their form.
In regard to colour they had less invention and hardly any taste; and
the grey skies of the north are not suited to the richer hues. So it
was to contortions of line and form that they had recourse. However
mitigated, these are characteristics that remain to this day. Even
in modern dress, the lines tend to be abrupt and exaggerated, and an
ever-changing fashion varies them in a discordant manner. Every ten
years, it has been said, the shape of womankind, as it is visible,
changes in Europe. Each new change means, of course, an attempt to
capture attention by a novel attitude. This is the cause that, out of
the whole nineteenth century, it was only for a few years under the
Consulate and early Empire that woman’s dress appears tolerable to an
artist’s eye or even, upon reflection, to the common man or woman.
[Illustration: A GURKHA’S WIFE]
Indian dress, on the other hand, has this in common with the
classic style, that it is simple in form and harmonious. It exacts
no distortions or deformities. It veils the body but it does not
misrepresent it. Still less does it attempt to substitute a fictitious
for a natural line. But while the Indian mind, like that of the
classic Mediterranean peoples, approves a natural simplicity of design,
unlike the other, it delights in a profusion of extraneous ornament.
Even the monstrous temples of the South are in essence simply planned,
but they are overlaid and even overloaded with masses of strange
carving and decoration. Indian psychology, in this not dissimilar from
the Teuton, has a craving for the wonderful and _bizarre_. The people
are of those that look for miracles. But, by a fortunate dispensation,
they are content to leave the pure lines of form undisturbed--a quality
that keeps them in regard to the broad facts of life true to nature.
For their wayward fancies they find scope in _bizarrerie_ of colour and
external decoration. Thus the Indian woman wears dresses that in shape
are easy and simple and beautiful, but she seeks further to attract by
a marvellous variety of colour and a curious adornment.
[Illustration: A GLIMPSE AT A DOOR IN GUJARÁT]
The limits of the _bizarre_ as it appears in India are probably reached
in the dress of the _Banjara_ women. They belong to a tribe that,
far from unmixed, has in it much of that gipsy race, which has also
migrated across the Sind deserts and Asia Minor to the furthest corners
of Europe. For centuries they were the carriers of India, transporting
salt and opium and grain on their pack-cattle along the trade-routes
across the continent. They have settled down now, some of them, in
little settlements where, under their own chieftains, they till the
soil and deal in cows and buffaloes. But many of them are wanderers to
this day, daring smugglers, dangerous when they are cornered, often
even thieves and robbers. The men are especially handsome, with a free
and fiery look, and a manly air. But the women also are not by any
means unattractive, and the striking dress they have chosen, with its
bold colours and its swinging skirt, sets them up well and handsomely.
The pity is that they will wear it till from age and dirt it drops off
with its own corruption. The bright colours they affect reach their
limit in the pleated skirt with its glaring reds and yellows, a motley
that has in it something of the clown or mountebank. The bodice in
no real sense fulfils its part but is rather a bright-decked screen
dropping from the neck to just below the waist-line, stiffened with
pieces of glass and thick stitching. The mantle which they adopt,
unlike that of most Hindu women, is short, like that of the Mussulman,
but coarser. Their jewelry is peculiar to themselves, and in shape
strange and striking. It is worn about the head in great profusion, so
that the twinkling cunning face seems almost set in silver. The hair
has two pleats at each side into which tassel-like ornaments of silver
are hung. But most _bizarre_ of all is the horn or stick, twined into
their hair, which rests upon the head and props up their mantle like a
tent. Originally perhaps designed to give the head a better protection
against the eastern sun, it has now acquired a religious significance
and is never doffed, even at night in bed, except by a widow. That
with this inconvenient attachment, they still can balance by its nice
adjustment heavy pots of water on their heads is one of the minor
wonders of the Indian country-side. The Banjara encampment with its
boldly-clad and boldly-staring women, also it may be added with its
strong fierce dogs of special breed, is a sight too picturesque ever to
be forgotten, especially in a country where life tends in the villages
to a brown monotone.
The _bizarre_ is again to be found prevailing even over form on the
Mongolian borderland of Northern India. In Nepal, whence come the brave
Gurkha soldiers of our wars, dress, like the shape and decoration of
the wooden temples of the people, has in it something alien to the
normal lines of Aryan and Indian womanhood. And the strangeness is
heightened by the quaintness of the jewelry and the uncut turquoises in
which they delight.
But in most of India proper the essence of dress is simple. Shoes are
not in general worn, though loose wide slippers of velvet or of leather
may be sometimes seen. The natural result is that the foot retains
a beauty which can never be expected when it is cramped by constant
pressure. The working woman, tramping miles along the roads or over
fields, with heavy burdens on her head or her child upon the hip,
loses of course too quickly the springing instep and sinks to a flat
and sprawling foot. But in the higher classes, or among the womanhood
whom caste preserves in a moderate seclusion, the foot is small,
well-curved, and light. It is a thing of infinite fascination, tinted
perhaps with the henna’s pink, almost like a flower. Even aged women
there are to be seen, their faces worn and wrinkled, who still have the
unspoilt feet of youth and well-born blood. Among the richer ladies of
the greater cities, where it is smart to be “advanced,” Parisian shoes
and silken stockings are nowadays worn, at least out of doors--a habit
enforced by the security thus gained against plague infection; but the
greater number still preserves the foot free and beautiful.
For the rest, among Hindu women the dress consists of three portions
only, never more, though they may be only two. These are a skirt,
a bodice, and a mantle. The skirt is not very different from the
petticoat of Europe in cut, but may either drop simply or be made up in
accordion pleats, something as a kilt is pleated, so cut as to stand
out a considerable way at the ankle. The latter shape, worn mainly by
the women of Márwár, but in painting invariably given to Rádha and the
loves of the god Krishna, is most beautiful with its brush and swing.
The skirt is fastened plainly by a silken cord tied fast at the waist
and is sometimes girdled by a silver belt. The Indian bodice again is
designed in the main to support the breast whose form it defines and
even, by its pattern, accentuates. It may either fit all round the
person, fastening in front by buttons or a ribbon, or be a covering for
the chest only, put on from the front and tied across the open back by
two tapes. But the most distinctive feature of all is certainly the
glorious drapery of the _sari_, which has been translated “mantle”
in default of a better word. The _sari_ is an article of dress as
distinctive as the Spanish mantilla and as difficult to wear with
the right charm and manner. It is an oblong of material, hemmed when
possible at one side with gold embroidery and edged with a sort of
closed fringe. When, as is most common, it is worn with a skirt,
its length is about fifteen feet and its breadth about three. When,
however, as in a contrasting style, it has by its intricacies to take
the place of an absent skirt as well, it measures some twenty-five feet
in length. It is to these mantles that the Indian lady devotes her
deftest thoughts and on them, within the limits conceded by caste and
fashion, that she displays her personal tastes. Their hues and patterns
have an infinite range. Some are in plain natural colours, white or
red or blue--solid, unbroken colour, not least beautiful in the stark
sunlight. Others are delicate cotton prints, flowered and sprigged and
dainty. Sometimes they are printed in a bold decorative pattern, formal
and conventional. Neutral and half tints at times mix in a bewildering
wealth of hue, till the eye is at a loss to know whether the ground
be green or pink or purple. The border may be a plain hem-stitch or a
two-inch broad piece of gold brocade, sumptuously woven in the acanthus
pattern or in the shape of birds and flowers. But in the draping of the
mantle, so simple in cut yet of such infinite variety, consists the
highest art and the true expression of personality. One end is taken
round the waist a couple of times and tucked into the waist-band at
the centre, falling to the feet in formal folds; the other passes over
head and shoulder, with the breadth decorated and displayed across the
upper half of the body. In the management of the upper half lies the
true secret. It must show the full beauty of the cloth, yet by a sort
of innocent accident, without a hint of ostentation. At the same time
it must be loose enough to allow graceful folds to drop naturally from
the head to the shoulders, and tight enough to sit close at the breast
whose curves it accentuates while it seems to veil. Enough but not
too much of the bodice must be shown with a fine nicety. The border
is at times allowed to turn carelessly up, till the gold armlet above
the elbow can be seen even on the covered right arm. At one moment, a
modest gesture brings the mantle across the face, as in shy courtesy
before an elder or an illustrious man; in a crowd it is draped to hide
both arms and conceal the figure; when it slips, it is quickly drawn
forward over the head with a charming pretence of timidity. The Márwári
woman by a trick peculiar to herself makes of her mantle a screen held
open between two fingers, through which only her lustrous eye appears,
melting and languorous; and in the armoury of every Indian woman the
mantle by its nice management is the chief instrument of love.
[Illustration: A WIDOW IN THE DECCAN]
The short mantle, worn as described, should of course imply a skirt.
But in the south of Gujarát, from Surat to Bombay, whether from the
steamy warmth of the climate or from some subtle change of mood,
ladies of the richer classes, while continuing to drape the mantle
in the same graceful way, have of late years given up the usage of a
skirt and wear at most a trim lace petticoat. The effect is not unlike
that of a recent ephemeral fashion in Western Europe. Seen in the bold
Indian sunlight, the double thicknesses of light silk or cotton are
little less transparent than a veil of gauze and limbs are revealed in
a shadowed fulness, which is less modest than it is suggestive.
In the Central plateau, however, and the south of India the skirt is
also dispensed with by a fashion that can claim at once antiquity
and respectability. There it is the long mantle, twenty-five feet in
length, which is worn. Of thick coarse silk and dark solid colour, it
is so draped as to be caught between the legs in a broad, low-hanging
fold, tucked loosely at the back. Its folds are carefully arranged to
leave a double thickness, marked by the border of the mantle, over
the upper part of the legs. It is a style inherited from a remote
antiquity, descendant from the dresses seen even on Buddhist carvings
in the great rock temples of the Deccan. Beautiful it can hardly be
called, with its effect of a divided skirt and its too clumsy folds
and thicknesses; but it is certainly not frivolous. Rather perhaps
should one say that it is eminently respectable, with its sameness
and stiff conventionality. The pressure of the ascetic ideal is shown
even more strongly in the monotonous colours, dark blue usually or
dark green, which are the ordinary wear in those parts of the country.
To the artist the costume, one would think, had little value; yet
that it can be idealized is seen from the effects achieved in the
simplifications of early sculpture. This contrast in dress between the
southern part of the Peninsula and Gujarát or Northern India reflects
once again that contrast in belief and character which has already,
perhaps with a too frequent repetition, been remarked. This monotony
of asceticism is even more noticeable in the south in the dress of
widows (poor creatures with shaven heads, their limbs untouched by a
single jewel!)--a dress of a mantle only, white or of a strange dull,
dingy red--a dress that kills all looks and attractions, save where the
light of religious duty, nature overcome, makes the starved face seem
spiritual.
[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE UNITED PROVINCES]
In the dress of Mussulman women the main feature is that trousers are
substituted for the Hindu skirt. They may be wide and baggy, cut in
loose full curves from the hips to the tighter openings at the ankles,
a style not too precise to be devoid of all attraction. Or, as worn by
ladies of the Upper Indian aristocracy and by other women who lay claim
to Moghul descent, they may sit tight like gloves from ankle to knee, a
fashion at once ugly and repellent. It would be difficult, even after
long reflection, to design a style of dress so unbecoming to a woman’s
gait and figure, so crudely frank, so hideously unsuggestive. A bodice
may or may not be worn, as Hindu influence is more or less strong. A
long fine shirt, half open at the neck and falling to about the knee,
is an invariable article of dress, which on a young woman fits well and
gracefully. In former days, and even now among the older-fashioned,
a long full-pleated skirt and jacket in one was worn above the other
garments, fitting tight to below the breast, then from the high-set
waist-line spreading out in wide stiff pleats like a broad petticoat.
Over her head the Mussulman lady wears a shawl or mantilla, less long
than her Hindu sister’s mantle, which is made of the finest textures
and is dyed in the most delicate of colours. It is the full dress of
the Mussulman lady that, except in Southern India, the dancing girl has
made her own for professional uses and embellished with every device of
pattern and every richness of material.
It would be interesting to digress here, in relation to Indian dress,
upon that long conflict between the _decolleté_ and the _retroussé_,
which in Europe has from time to time been settled by the successes
of the former. But a full discussion would go beyond the purpose and
necessary limits of this book. Briefly it may be said that, in this
matter too, Indian dress quite correctly expresses the difference
which subsists between the present European and immemorial Indian
temperament. For, with reasonable exceptions, it may be said that in
India, on the whole, no special feelings, either of modesty or the
reverse, attach to the lower limbs. The skirt is, therefore, not the
hampering, stiff garment that it usually is in Europe. But the upper
half of the body, on the other hand, has a far greater significance
than in Western Europe. And this it is which has made the use of the
covering mantle or _sari_ the most distinctive feature of Indian
costume.
Dress even in its simplest form has been seen to have its sectarian
meaning and restrictions. A widow for instance, at least among orthodox
Brahmans in the Peninsula, is limited to certain solid colours,
never black or dark blue, red as a rule, or white. And every woman
is restricted to definite shapes and cut. To transgress beyond these
limits would be to offend against caste rules with a sanctity defended
and sanctioned by a caste tribunal. But greater significance attaches
to the use of jewelry. Some stones are valued for this or that magical
virtue; certain metals can or must be used only at definite times and
places: some shapes of ornament are bidden or forbidden to a certain
caste. The prohibition against wearing gold upon the feet is the most
obvious instance. Here a value of a magical kind, as a purifying agent,
is ascribed to the metal, and its use was not allowed on limbs where it
might be contaminated by the dust and dirt of the road. Only in royal
families is the prescription ever disregarded; and even then only by
few.
Of forms and modes of ornament peculiar to one caste and partly at
least sanctified by superstition, something has already been said in
describing the fisher and the gipsy women. But instances might be
multiplied without end. Each section nearly of the community has at
least one peculiar jewel, associated with a religious festival or a
caste ceremony or belief. Perhaps the most obvious examples are the
charms and talismans freely worn by all classes of Mussulman women.
In these the stones and their settings are the symbolic expressions
of deep and mysterious thoughts and the instruments of a magical
significance. On amulets of white jade or carnelian are inscribed
in Arabic characters the highest names of the Most High. On other
cartouches are engraved the sacred symbols of the Jewish Cabbalists,
just as Hindus draw and venerate that sign of the Swastika which from
the time of the Bronze Age has presented the beneficent motions of
the sun. They have little boxes of chased gold in which are enclosed
written charms to protect the wearer from the malice of jinns and the
malevolence of the evil eye. On heart-shaped plates of silver they cut
the sacred hand which persists in the escutcheon of Ulster baronets,
and on others are inscribed the name of “Tileth” and the injunction,
“Adam and Eve away from here.”
But the use of jewelry has a religious tinge no less among Hindus. It
is for instance a common belief that at least a speck of gold must be
worn upon the person to ensure ceremonial purity. Thus in Northern
India there are castes where married women wear plates of gold on some
of the front teeth; while it is general when preparing the dead for
the burning to attach a gold coin or ring to the corpse. Moreover, the
wearing of jewelry by women is prescribed by the sacred text which
says: “A wife being gaily adorned, her whole house is embellished, but
if she be destitute of ornaments, all will be deprived of decoration.”
This again is one reason why there is so little change in the design.
Variety there is, and indeed the number of ornaments, each with a
different name and use, is almost bewildering. But in each kind the
design passes from one to another generation almost unchanged, and
the craftsman has no need to devise new forms and varying settings.
What has been worn by the grandmother will be equally pleasing to the
grand-daughter. When there is change and variety, it is only in the
large commercial cities, where European patterns are being exploited to
the ruin of indigenous craftsmanship.
The bracelet is the most significant and the nose-ring the most
peculiar of Indian ornaments. For bracelets are above all the visible
sign of marriage. Young girls before their wedding may wear bangles of
many kinds: but the first act of widowhood is to discard them all. Some
which are made of lac are peculiar to the married woman, and next to
them in significance are the bangles of variegated glass which are so
much appreciated. On the husband’s death these are at once shattered;
and the same breaking of bangles is the accompaniment of divorce. The
nose-ring, as it is called in English, is only seldom in shape a ring.
In Northern India indeed, in certain castes, a real ring of large
diameter passes through the cartilage; and its effect is not beautiful.
But in most places and classes, it is not so much a ring as a small
cluster of gems affixed by one means or another to the nostril. That
worn most commonly in the Deccan--a sort of brooch with a large almost
triangular setting--is also clumsy and unbeautiful. Another type, worn
by the cultivators of Gujarát, is like a button in which the jewelled
top screws, through a hole bored in the nostril, into the lower half--a
form no less ungainly. But Mussulmans adopt a different and more
graceful form. Through the central cartilage of the nose a small gold
wire passes on which drops a jewel, at its best a fine pear-shaped
pearl, dangling down to the central curve of the upper lip. But the
prettiest of all--a real aid this to a pretty face--is a small stud
of a single diamond or ruby fixed almost at the corner of the left
nostril. Here it has the value of a tiny beauty-spot, more attractive
by its sheen, and draws the eye to the curve of a finely-chiselled nose
and down to the petulant smiling lips.
Among the most beautiful of Indian ornaments are the _champlevé_
enamels made by Sikh workers who have found a home in the pink city
of Jaipur. In golden plaques they scrape little depressions which
they fill with oxides of various metals, fixed by the nicely-varied
temperature of fire. Gems also are worn in great profusion by the
richer classes, though little by those who have to regard their
ornaments also as an investment. To the poor of course the purchase
of silver or gold jewelry is still the only form of saving with which
they are familiar and in which they have confidence; and it is quite
impossible even to guess the millions of bullion hoarded unproductively
in this form in India. In regard to gems, many a superstitious belief
still remains. Thus it is believed that in an evil conjunction of the
sun the ruby is propitious, while the diamond is remedial against the
baleful influences of the moon. On the day of the week named after Mars
or War, the coral should be trusted, and the zircon is efficacious
against Mercury known as Buddha. The pearl is specially designed for
wear when Jupiter is dangerous. The cat’s eye deflects the radiances of
Venus and in the ascending node the emerald is sovereign. This lore of
gems is set out at length in the _Ruby-garland_ of Maharaja Surendra
Mohan Tagore.
The graceful dress and finely-designed jewelry of the Indian women is
a covering and an embellishment, suitable and, as a rule, singularly
attractive. But the person that is so covered receives no less care.
An almost scrupulous personal cleanliness is observed by nearly every
woman. Among the gipsy and criminal tribes indeed clothes are worn
until they drop off from age; and the untouchable castes who perform
the lowest menial services and cluster in sordid hovels outside the
village also leave much to be desired. In the crowded slums of the
industrial cities, too, it is to be feared, there are many, especially
of the professional beggars, who from vice or dulled apathy allow
themselves to become foul and loathsome. But even the worst of these
could perhaps be equalled in the mean streets of Europe. These degraded
classes once out of account, however, there is no question that the
niceties of personal cleanliness are followed in all ranks with a fine
devotion which can be equalled only in the upper class of Europe. In
some points they may put even those to shame though they cannot vie
with the modern luxury of the English or French lady’s bath, with its
sponges and gloves and powders and perfumed salts. Washing in India is
a religious ordinance, scrupulously observed, and the body is cleansed
with water and made smooth like bronze with orpiment and tinged with
henna and perfumed with the essence of flowers, till it is a mirror of
purity, worthy of adornment and respect.
The Moving Finger
“A creed is a rod
And a crown is of night,
But this thing is God
To be man with thy might,
To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit and live out thy life
as the light.
…
I bid you but _be_.
I have need not of prayer;
I have need of you free
As your mouths of mine air,
That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me
fair.”
_Hertha._ SWINBURNE.