Ancient Indian Costume c8.s3.4

c8.s3.4

The skirt, *bhairnivasani*, evolved from the *antariya* which when stitched on one side became tubular and was worn gathered together at the waist, and held by a girdle. This was one of the earliest forms of a clumsily stitched skirt and used as early as the Early Bronze period by the Germanic race. The *bhairnivasani* was first used by the Jain and Buddhist nuns, and arose from the idea that a woman's body was sinful and had to be covered. Also, the *kachcha* and the *lehnga* styles were considered too seductive as they entailed the *antariya* to be pulled tightly across the hips. With the Jain sect in particular, an extraordinary amount of clothing was worn by the nuns to completely hide the shape of the female form. From the *bhairnivasani* evolved the skirt with the drawstring or *nada*, called the *ghagri*. The *ghagri* was a narrow skirt six feet long—the same length as the original *antariya*. It was worn mainly by village women, and was very attractive since the border of the cloth was used vertically in the centre to decorate it.