The History of Clothing

Ancient · South Asia · 3000 BCE - 500 CE

Ancient South Asian Clothing

Home to the world's earliest cotton cultivation, ancient South Asia developed draped garment traditions — from the dhoti to the sari — that have endured for thousands of years.

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Indus Valley and Vedic Dress

Mural of the Bodhisattva Padmapani in Ajanta Cave 1, wearing a jeweled crown, pearl necklaces, and armbands Bodhisattva Padmapani, Ajanta Cave 1, c. 5th century CE. Photo: Abdulsayed. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300–1300 BCE) was among the first cultures to cultivate and weave cotton, a fiber that would become synonymous with South Asian textile traditions. Archaeological finds at Mohenjo-daro include fragments of cotton cloth and depictions of figures wearing draped garments. The famous "Priest-King" statue shows a figure wearing a trefoil-patterned shawl draped over one shoulder, suggesting that even in this early period, textile decoration and draping style carried social meaning.

During the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BCE), texts describe garments in terms that suggest continuity with later South Asian dress. They name a garment (vasas) worn with an overgarment or mantle, and, from the Atharvaveda onward, the nivi, an undergarment that was probably a simple apron of cloth, worn especially by women. Simple wrapped cloths of this kind are ancestors of the dhoti — the unstitched rectangular cloth worn by men across the subcontinent — and the Vedic mantle anticipates the later uttariya, an upper cloth draped over the shoulders. The texts most often mention wool, though cotton was by then being grown across northern India, and some scholars read certain later Vedic terms as references to silk. Dyeing was already a recognized trade — the Yajurveda lists a female dyer — and plant colors such as indigo and turmeric yellow were probably among those used.

Maurya and Post-Maurya Period

Sandstone railing pillar from Bharhut showing a yakshi grasping a tree, wearing a beaded girdle over a lower garment, a sash with hanging ends, layered necklaces, and heavy anklets Shalabhanjika (tree-nymph) from Bharhut, c. 100 BCE, Indian Museum, Kolkata. Photo: G41rn8. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Maurya Empire (c. 322–185 BCE) and its successors left abundant sculptural evidence of ancient Indian clothing. Sculptures from Sanchi, Bharhut, and Mathura depict men and women in finely draped unstitched garments — the antariya (lower garment), uttariya (upper drape), and kayabandh (waist sash). Women's garments appear to prefigure the sari, with fabric wrapped around the lower body and drawn up over one shoulder or draped over the head.

Textiles in this period became increasingly refined and traded widely. Classical Greek and Roman sources marveled at Indian cotton: the first-century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea catalogues fine muslin among the goods shipped west from Indian ports, and Pliny the Elder complained of the coin draining out of Rome to pay for such luxuries. The port cities of western India exported cotton textiles across the Indian Ocean and into the Roman Empire. Decoration may already have included tie-dyeing, block printing, and embroidery, techniques that remain central to South Asian textile arts today. The Buddhist and Jain emphasis on simplicity also influenced dress, with Buddhist monks wearing robes pieced together from cut cloth and colored with prescribed plant dyes as markers of renunciation.

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