The Rashtrakutas and their Times c21.179

c21.179

The Hindu dress of our period does not seem to have required much tailoring. Towards the end of the 7th century A.D., the Hindu male dress usually consisted of two unstitched cloths, one worn round like the present dhoti, and the other used as an upper garment. (141) Nārada confirms the above statement of I-tsing, for he informs us that a witness might be presumed to be a perjurer if he continuously goes on shaking the upper garment, wherewith his arm is covered. (142) This again would suggest that an upper garment was used instead of a stitched shirt. Two travellers of the 13th and the 14th centuries, Marco Polo and Ibn Batuta, show that down to the 14th century the dress in the Deccan continued to be of the same kind. Marco Polo states that in the whole of Malabar no tailor could be found who could cut or stitch a coat, (143) and from Ibn Batuta we learn that even the Zamorian of Calicut was wearing only a loose unstitched upper garment which was fluttering in the air. Women were, however, using stitched petticoats, as would appear from the references in the contemporary literary works.