The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.82

v1.c10.82

The Buddhists are equally particular in this respect, and have many positive injunctions against impropriety in dress. Mr. Fergusson suspects that the story given in the *Dulva* of a lewd priestess, who created great scandal by wearing in public a piece of mulsin of so thin a texture that she appeared naked, and the canons which say, that to go about with thin dress on is absolutely immoral, are of modern origin; but notwithstanding the lavish freedom with which the theory of interpolation has been of late worked out in support of particular ideas, it is not at all likely that anybody will attribute the simile in the *Ṛgveda* to a mischievous tampering with the original by interested and unscrupulous Brāhmaṇs. The only reasonable inference that can be drawn from the passage is, that in the times of the *Ṛgveda*, the covering of the bust was deemed an essential element of female modesty by, at least, certain classes of the community; and that that idea has been since kept alive by their descendants who composed the *Rāmāyaṇa*, the *Mahābhārata*, and other later Sanskrit works, is so manifest in those records that little need be said in support of it. The greatest insult which the wicked Kurus could offer the Pāṇḍus, was to order their wife, Draupadī, to be disrobed in open court, and that lady in her anxiety, most piteously prays Kṛṣṇa to save her modesty. In the first century before Christ, Purūravas exclaims at the sight of his lady-love: