Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/425

 IV.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. — 389 “Through a blue Odna appeared her beautiful fair face; what if a bee mistakes it for a lotus and stings ?’’ A Nivivandha or girdle is also described in many of our old poems as worn by women. It was the fashion with the Bengalis of the higher classes to wear their hair long and in plaits. We find in Chandi Das, Radha’s maidens humor- ously asking Krisna why his braided hair hangs loosely down his back. We have many accounts of how Chaitanya Deva’s long hair was perfumed and washed with Amlaki (myrobolan) and how it was cut off by a barber named Deva (according to some Madhu) on the eve of his taking the vow of asceticism. In Vijay Gupta’s Padmapurana we find the following lines :— “Beautiful Laksmindra’s long and _ flowing hair hung loose as his kinsmen carried him to the bank of the river Gangura.” In Krithivasa’s Ramayana we find “the soldiers of Rama fled precipitously, havig no time even to tie their long hair into knots.’+ The Bengalis up to the 16th century wore their hair long as the Madrasis and the Uriyas do now. They scented it with perfumes and plaited it like the women. In the 17th century they imitated the fashion of the Moslem gentry—who allowed their hair to grow A NTT QUT AAAS MTT AAMT HA | জ্ঞাতিগণ ধরে নিল গাঙ্ুরের কুল ॥ Vijay Gupta. 1 “পলায় রামের সৈন্ত নাহি বাধে চুল।” Krittivas.