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Ancient · South Asia · 3000 BCE - 500 CE
One of the earliest centers of cotton cultivation, ancient South Asia developed draped garment traditions, such as the dhoti, that have endured for thousands of years.
By Dan Schnau · Last updated
Ancient South Asian clothing, from the Vedic age to the Gupta kings, was built mostly from unstitched lengths of cloth: a lower wrapper, an upper cloth draped over the shoulders, and a cloth wound around the head.12,6,15 Cotton was the most common fiber,12 and Indian cotton cloth was shipped west across the Indian Ocean, as far as Berenike, a Red Sea port of Roman Egypt.1,17 Stitched garments came with peoples from Central Asia, Kushan kings wore long coats and boots, and by the Gupta period stitched clothing was common.12,16
Almost no cloth from this period survives. The archaeologist Jason Hawkes notes that textiles are virtually absent from the South Asian archaeological record until the late medieval period, and that only eleven or twelve examples of preserved fibers and cloth fragments have been found across the subcontinent.6 The evidence comes instead from:
The Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization, whose cities flourished c. 2600–1900 BCE, was among the first cultures to cultivate and weave cotton, a fiber that would become synonymous with South Asian textile traditions.11 Archaeological finds at Mohenjo-daro include fragments of cotton cloth and depictions of figures wearing draped garments.10 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.10 Our page on prehistoric South Asian clothing and the first cotton covers the Indus cities in more detail.
During the Vedic period (c. 1500–500 BCE), texts describe garments in terms that suggest continuity with later South Asian dress.3 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.3,4 By post-Vedic times these draped garments had developed into a costume with names of its own: the antariya, a lower wrapper held in place by a sash or a girdle of jewelry, and the uttariya, an upper wrapper draped in many folds; the dhoti, wrapped and tucked into a kind of unstitched pantaloon and still widely worn by men, continues the same unstitched principle.12 The texts 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.3,6 Vedic texts also mention hemp cloth.6 Dyeing was already a recognized trade, and the Yajurveda lists a female dyer.5 The early Vedas mention shining raiments, which the textile historian Jasleen Dhamija takes as evidence that gold thread was in use.12
The Maurya Empire (c. 322–185 BCE) and its successors left sculptural evidence of ancient Indian clothing.8 The Mauryas made the first monumental stone sculptures in India, statues of nature spirits called yakshas and yakshis that stood almost two meters tall.8 The highly polished sandstone yakshi from Didarganj wears clothing and jewelry on her lower body, while her upper body is bare except for necklaces, and she holds a fly whisk, or chauri.8
Sculptures from Bharhut and Mathura depict men and women in finely draped unstitched garments: the antariya (lower garment), uttariya (upper drape), and a sash at the waist.6,7,12 The carved railings at Bharhut, from the second century BCE and among the earliest narrative sculptures in South Asia, show dhotis, chaddars (lengths of cloth draped around the shoulders or across the body), and lengths of cloth wrapped around the hair in various styles.6 Women's lower garments could be so fine that the figure reads as nude: on a Mathura tree-nymph in the Victoria and Albert Museum, only a ridge across the stomach and a falling sash reveal a skirt of transparent fabric, perhaps a fine muslin.7
Headdresses could be large. A terracotta of about 100 BCE from Bengal, made in the Shunga period (185–78 BCE), shows a wealthy man in a bulbous turban finely incised with textile patterning, a style the Cleveland Museum of Art calls characteristic of the period.19
In the northwest, the sculpture of Gandhara mixed Indian dress with outside influences. In the Kushan period, Gandharan sculpture was strongly influenced by Greek and Persian art, as the curly hair and draped clothing of its figures show, and its bodhisattvas often resembled Kushan princes, with layered drapery and ornate accessories.21 Dhamija reads the elaborate drapery of Gandharan sculpture as a reflection of the local costume, while soldiers, possibly of Central Asian origin, appear in stitched garments.12 Relief panels from the Buner area show Phrygians in trousers, tunics, and conical caps beside Greek wine bearers.22
The Kushan kings kept a stitched costume of their own. A headless statue of the emperor Kanishka, from the Kushan shrine at Mat, near Mathura, carved in the second century CE, wears a coat and mantle that reach almost to the ankles over a tunic, with bead-like borders at the hems, a belt, and thick, padded boots with buckles.16 A Brahmi inscription across the garments identifies Kanishka and gives his royal titles.27 Kushan-period women, Dhamija adds, wore jackets fastened with decorative buttons over their wrapped skirts, and sleeved tunics with rounded necks.12
In south India, Satavahana sculptures show unstitched garments alongside stitched ones, such as a tunic with a V-neck and sleeves, and soldiers in sleeved tunics with tight trousers.12
Under the Gupta dynasty (c. 320–550 CE),24 stitched garments became common, according to Dhamija, because the Gupta rulers controlled territories from Central Asia to Gujarat.12 Yet the Gupta-era murals at Ajanta show royalty in flowing garments while attendants, entertainers, and soldiers wear stitched clothes.12 Sculpture softened the look of cloth, as on a seated Mathura Buddha of 400–430 CE,24 and a fifth-century Vishnu from central India wears a scarf tied loosely around his hips and a crown with strings of jewels pouring from a lion face at its center.23
Men and women wore many of the same pieces. Dhamija notes that both wore a wrapped head covering, the usnisa, quite distinct from the later turban, and she records a post-Vedic breast cloth, the pratidi.12
Nearchus, as quoted in Arrian's Indica, described Indians in garments of a bright white "linen" that grew on trees: a tunic to the middle of the calf, an outer garment thrown around the shoulders, and another wound around the head.15 Rank showed in accessories. Only the rich wore ivory earrings, the more dignified used sunshades in summer, and people wore neatly made slippers of white skin and sandals with high, colored soles that made the wearer look taller.15 Hawkes finds clear differences in dress and ornament between social strata in sculpture and painting.6
Cotton was the most common textile fiber, along with other plant fibers and wool, and silk was indigenous to Assam.12 The Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft attributed to Kautilya, ranks the cotton fabrics of Madhura, Aparanta, Kalinga, Kasi, Vanga, Vatsa, and Mahisha as the best, describes a white, soft fabric from Vanga, and names silk cloth (kauseya) and fabric made in China (chinapatta).18
The dyes left fewer traces. The Periplus lists indigo, with cotton cloth, among the exports of Barbaricum at the mouth of the Indus, and colored lac among the goods that ships from Ariaca carried to the African coast.1 Monks once dyed robes with cow dung and yellow clay until the Buddha allowed six dyes made from roots, stems, bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit.9 At Berenike, some cottons of the late fourth and fifth centuries were resist-dyed in blue, with motifs painted on the cloth in a resist such as wax before dyeing, a technique associated especially with India.17
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,1 and Pliny the Elder complained of the coin draining out of Rome to pay for such luxuries.2 The port cities of western India exported cotton textiles across the Indian Ocean and into the Roman Empire.1,6 The finest sorts, it says, were the Gangetic muslins.1 At home, the Greek ambassador Megasthenes found the Indians frugal in most things but fond of finery: as Strabo summarizes him, they wore "apparel embroidered with gold" and "gay-coloured linen garments."12,13
Archaeology confirms the trade. At Berenike, cotton makes up between 18 and 28 percent of the early Roman textiles, depending on find-spot; most of it is Z-spun, unlike the S-spun yarn of Nile Valley spinners, and archaeology and written sources point to India as its origin.17 Indian sailors on the India ships brought cotton pile sleeping mats with them, and sails found there, built to a Mediterranean design, were made of Indian cotton and repaired only with Indian thread.17 In the late fourth and fifth centuries, Indian cottons still made up about a quarter of the textiles found at the town.17
Renunciation shaped dress as well. Buddhist monks wore robes pieced together from cut cloth and colored with prescribed plant dyes,9 and the two main Jain traditions take their names from their monks' clothing: Svetambara ("white-clad") monks wear white, while Digambara ("sky-clad") monks go naked as a sign of non-attachment to the world.14
The state took an interest in cloth too. The Arthashastra describes a Superintendent of Weaving who gave spinning work to widows, disabled women, ascetic women, and others, with wages set by the fineness and quantity of the thread.18 Cloth was taxed as well: the Arthashastra and various inscriptions record levies on it from at least the early centuries CE.6
"Women in ancient India wore the sari as it is worn today." Ancient dress used two pieces, the antariya and the uttariya,12 and Banglapedia traces the sari's evolution from that two-piece garment into a one-piece drape.25 The Vedic nivi was an undergarment,4 not the modern nivi drape, which is credited to Gyanodanandini Tagore, who lengthened the sari in the 1860s.26 For how these draped wrappers developed into the modern garment, see the history of the sari.
"Tailoring came to India with the Muslims." Dhamija calls this assumption incorrect: early literature has words for the needle, the thimble, scissors, and a sewing bag.12
"Ancient Indian clothing was plain white." Megasthenes saw gold embroidery and brightly colored garments,13 indigo was exported,1 and Indian cotton reached Egypt resist-dyed in blue.17
