Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v2.c20.s5.15

v2.c20.s5.15

Inscriptions do not enlighten us on the question of the dress worn by the women of Vijayanagara. If the converse of the following is suggested, we have some few details about the general appearance of a woman. In an inscription dated A. D. 1422, the glory of the great Jaina general Irugappa Daṇṇāyaka, manifested in the woes of women of the people whom he had conquered, is thus sung: "By their ears, their earrings forgotten, by their foreheads with no marks fixed on them, by their dishevelled curls, by their breasts untouched by strings of pearls, and by their *bimba*-like lips deprived of the redness (caused) by the betel, the wives of hostile kings very often make his great prowess manifest on all sides ".²