History of clothing in the Indian subcontinent can be traced to the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300 BCE-1300 BCE) or earlier. Indians have mainly worn clothing made up of locally grown cotton. India was one of the first places where cotton was cultivated and used even as early as 2500 BCE during the Harappan era. The remnants of the ancient Indian clothing can be found in the figurines discovered from the sites near the Indus Valley civilisation, the rock-cut sculptures, the cave paintings, and human art forms found in temples and monuments. These scriptures view the figures of human wearing clothes which can be wrapped around the body. Taking the instances of the sari, the bandana, to that of the turban and the dhoti; the traditional Indian wears were mostly tied around the body in various ways.
Indus Valley Civilisation period Evidence for textiles in Indus Valley Civilisation are not available from preserved textiles but from impressions made into clay and from preserved pseudomorphs. The only evidence found for clothing is from iconography and some unearthed Harappan figurines which are usually unclothed.Keay, John, India, a History. New York: Grove Press, 2000. These little depictions show that usually men wore a long cloth wrapped over their waist and fastened it at the back (just like a close clinging dhoti). A turban was worn in some communities as shown by some of the male figurines. Evidence also shows that there was a tradition of wearing a long robe over the left shoulder in higher class society to show their opulence. The normal attire of the women at that time was a skirt up to knee length, leaving the waist bare. Headdresses were also worn by the women. Also women wore long skirts, stitched with tight tunic on their upper body and trousers as well. Inferences from mother goddess statue from Delhi National Museum suggests female wearing a short tunic with a short skirt and trousers. There also evidences of men wearing trousers, conical gown/tunic with an upper waist band. The mother goddess statues show women also wearing heavy earrings which were also pretty common in the historic period of India and also depict with heavy necklaces with overhanging medallion with holes in them for gemstones. Female statues and terracotta arts and figurines like a dancing girl also depict long hair probably braided and draped in cloth.
Fibre for clothing generally used were cotton, flax, silk, wool, linen, and leather. One fragment of coloured cloth is available in pieces of evidence which are dyed with red madder show that people in Harappan Civilisation dyed their cotton clothes with a range of colours.
Both sexes wore jewellery. The ornaments include necklaces, bracelets, earrings, anklets, rings, bangles, and pectorals, which were generally made of gold, silver, copper, stones like lapis lazuli, turquoise, amazonite, and quartz. Many of the male figurines also have their hair dressed in various styles like the hair woven into a booty, hair coiled in a ring on the top of the head, while beards were usually trimmed. Indus Valley Civilisation men are frequently depicted wearing headbands especially to contain hair bun at the back. People have been shown wearing elaborate headdresses like turban, conical hats, pakol hats.
Dressing of Indus Valley Civilisation people show presence of multi-ethnic people of diverse backgrounds. For instance, people have been depicted wearing Pashtun style pakol hat with a chocker like neck ornament as well as Punjabi style pagri and Rajasthani style bangles and necklaces and many other styles prominent in neighbouring regions of the Indian subcontinent.
Some scholars, such as Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, have argued that headdress from the royal cemetery of Ur is an import from Indus Valley Civilisation since similar headdresses have been found to have been depicted in many of its Mother Goddess figurines and actual ones discovered from sites such as Kunal and the floral depiction in gold leaves of species native to Indian subcontinent such as Dalbergia sissoo or pipal, and since no such ornamentation has been shown in Mesopotamian art itself.
Ancient period
Vedic period The Vedic period was the time duration between 1500 and 500 BCE. The garments worn in the Vedic period mainly included a single cloth wrapped around the whole body and draped over the shoulder. People used to wear the lower garment called paridhana which was pleated in front and used to tie with a belt called mekhala and an upper garment called uttariya (a covering like a shawl) which they used to remove during summers. "Orthodox males and females usually wore the uttariya by throwing it over the left shoulder only, in the style called upavita". There was another garment called pravara that they used to wear in cold weather. This was the general garb of both the sexes, differing only in size of cloth and manner of wearing. Sometimes the poor people wore the lower garment as a loincloth only, while the wealthy would wear it extending to the feet as a sign of prestige.
In the Rig Veda, mainly three terms were described – adhivastra, kurlra, and andpratidhi – for garments which correspondingly denote the outer cover (veil), a head-ornament or head-dress (turban), and part of woman's dress. Many pieces of evidence are found for ornaments like niska or rukma, which were worn in the ear and around the neck; there was a great use of gold beads in necklaces which show that gold was mainly used in jewellery. Rajata-hiranya ('white gold'), also known as silver, was not in that much of use as no evidence of silver is figured out in the Rig Veda.
In the Atharva Veda, garments began to be made of the inner cover, an outer cover, and a chest-cover. Besides kurlra and andpratidhi (which were already mentioned in the Rig Veda), there are other parts, such as nivi, vavri, upavasana, kumba, usnlsa, and tirlta, that also appeared in Atharva Veda, which correspondingly denote underwear, upper garment, veil, and the last three denoting some kinds of head-dress (head-ornament). Also mentioned were updnaha (footwear) and kambala (blanket), mani (jewel) is also mentioned for making ornaments in this Vedic text.
Pre-Mauryan era Even though scholars have debated the archaeological evidence from the pre-Mauryan era, a lot of terracotta artifacts by various scholars have been dated to the pre-Mauryan era which shows continuity of the dressing styles leading up to the Mauryan period. The terracotta also contain naturalistic style of depicting human faces just like Mauryan periods. The pre-Mauryan periods have been marked by the continuation of Indus arts and depict elaborate headdresses, conical hats with heavy earring. Bronze rattling mirror excavated from Pazyryk dated to the 4th century BCE also depict Indians wearing typical Indian classical clothing such as the dhoti wrap and tight-fitting half-sleeved stitched shirts like kurta. Another pre-Mauryan archaeological evidence of Indian dressing comes from Saurashtra janapada coins which are one of the earliest representations of Indian pre-Mauryan arts. The coins are dated between 450 and 300 BCE and have been repeatedly over struck just like punch-marked coins.
Mauryan period
During the Mauryan dynasty (322–185 BC) the earliest evidence of stitched female clothing is available from the statue of a woman (from Mathura, 3rd century BCE). Ladies in the Mauryan Empire often used to wear an embroidered fabric waistband with drum-headed knots at the ends. As an upper garment, people's main garment was uttariya, a long scarf. The difference existed only in the manner of wearing. Sometimes, its one end is thrown over one shoulder and sometimes it is draped over both shoulders.
In textiles, mainly cotton, silk, linen, wool, muslin, etc. are used as fibres. Ornaments latched on to a special place in this era also. Some of the jewellery had their specific names also. Satlari, chaulari, paklari were some of the necklaces.
Men wore Antariya (knee-length, worn in kachcha style with the fluted end tucked in at centre front) and Tunic (one of the earliest depictions of the cut and sewn garment; it has short sleeves and a round neck, full front opening with ties at the neck and waist, and is hip length). A statue of a warrior shows Boots (fitting to the knees cap) and a band (tied at the back over short hair). A broad flat sword with cross straps on the sheath is suspended from the left shoulder.
Classical period Early classical period Early classical period has ample evidence of dresses worn by ancient Indians in several relief sculptures which depict not only the dressing styles, but also architecture and lifestyle of the period. Buddhist reliefs from Amravathi, Gandhara, Mathura, and many other sites contain carved reliefs from Jataka tales and exhibit the fashion of the period between the 2nd century BCE to Gupta periods.
Gupta period The Gupta period lasted from 320 CE to 550 CE. Chandragupta I was the founder of this empire. Stitched garments became very popular in this period. Stitched garments became a sign of royalty.
The antariya worn by the women turned into gagri, which has many swirling effects exalted by its many folds. Hence dancers used to wear it a lot. As it is evident from many Ajanta paintings, women used to wear only the lower garment in those times, leaving the bust part bare but these depictions may be a stylistic representation of mother goddess cult since Indus Valley Civilisation. Whereas women with stitched upper body garment or tunic have been shown from pre-Mauryan period as early as 400 BCE in a folk art depicted on Pazyryk rattling mirrors. Ujjain coin from 200 BCE depicts a man wearing achkan. Depictions from terracotta clay tablets from Chandraketugarh show women wearing clothes made of muslin. Various kinds of blouses (cholis) evolved. Some of them had strings attached leaving the back open while others were used to tie from the front side, exposing the midriff.
Clothing in the Gupta period was mainly cut and sewn garments. A long sleeved brocaded tunic became the main costume for privileged people like the nobles and courtiers. The main costume for the king was most often a blue closely woven silk antariya, perhaps with a block printed pattern. In order to tighten the antariya, a plain belt took the position of kayabandh. Mukatavati (necklace which has a string with pearls), kayura (armband), kundala (earring), kinkini (small anklet with bells), mekhala (pendant hung at the centre, also known as katisutra), nupura (anklet made of beads) were some of the ornaments made of gold, used in that time. There was extensive use of ivory during that period for jewellery and ornaments.
During the Gupta period, men used to have long hair along with beautiful curls and this style was popularly known as gurna kuntala style. In order to decorate their hair, they sometimes put headgear, a band of fabric around their hairs. On the other hand, women used to decorate their hair with luxuriant ringlets or a jewelled band or a chaplet of flowers. They often used to make a bun on the top of the head or sometimes low on the neck, surrounded by flowers or ratnajali (bejewelled net) or muktajala (net of pearls).
In south Chalukyas of vatapi Chalukyas of vatapi have unique clothing, they wore veshti in different styles sometimes veshti goes under knees. The uniqueness of jewelleries is the presence of thigh band.
Medieval period