Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/137

Rh their rank in society and the race to which they belonged. Men of the middle classes, amongst the pure Tamils, ordinarily wore two pieces of cotton cloth, one wrapped round the loins, and reaching to the knees and the other loosely tied round the head. They did not cut their hair but allowed it to grow to its natural length, and gathered it up on the crown of the head or tied it in a large knot on one side. Coloured strings of silk with glittering blue beads were used by the higher classes to fasten the head knot, and the ends of the strings were allowed to hang like a tassel. A Marava chieftain who belonged to the Naga race wore a cloth bound to his waist by a blue strap, and had peacock feathers stuck in his head. Brahmins cropped their hair leaving a small tuft on the top of the head. A Tamil poet compares the tuft of hair on a horse’s head to the short hair on the heads of Brahmin youths. The soldiers employed to guard the public thoroughfares, and the servants in the king’s palace wore coats. In this ancient period, a full dress appears to have been the outward sign of a servant rather than of a master: and the nobles put on only so much clothing as can be worn without discomfort in a hot climate.

In the ordinary dress of the Tamil woman, the shoulders, arms and body down to the waist were entirely bare, the drapery descending from the loins downwards to the ankles. The part of the body which was left uncovered was generally adorned with sandal and other fragrant powders. The Naga women appear to have been almost naked like those depicted in the Amaravati sculptures. The courtezans wore a piece of muslin which covered their body from the waist to the middle of the thigh: but it was of such fine texture that it hardly concealed their person. The women of the hill tribes wore bunches of