Rajasthan Costumes, Ornaments and Customs: Exam Notes

Dress and ornament in Rajasthan are not decoration alone; they carry information. The colour of a turban tells the occasion, the print of an odhni tells the season and the event in a family, and the ornaments a woman wears tell her region and her married state. Because the desert is hot by day and cold by night and water is scarce, the clothing is loose, layered and dyed in colours that hide dust. State service and police papers ask a steady two or three questions from this chapter every year, almost always as a matching of a name with a part of the body, a district or an occasion.

The dress of men

A man's basic dress is the dhoti with an upper garment and a head cloth. The angrakha is a long coat tied with strings across the chest, and its short version is the bugatari; the atamsukh is a long padded coat worn in the winter; the patka or kamarbandh is the sash tied at the waist. The head cloth has two names, safa and pagri, which are not quite the same thing: the safa of Marwar is broader, stiffer and tied with less cloth, while the pagri of Jaipur and Shekhawati is longer and more finely wound. Styles of turban carry princely names, the Amarshahi of Udaipur, named after Maharana Amar Singh, the Shahjahani, the Udaishahi, the Swaroopshahi and the Khidmatiya among them. Colour is a language of its own: a saffron or kesariya turban stands for valour and was worn into battle, a white one is worn in mourning, and the panchranga and lahariya safas belong to festivals such as Teej and Gangaur.

The dress of women and the odhni

A woman wears the ghagra, a wide pleated skirt, with the kanchli or kurti above it and the odhni over both. The odhni, also called chunari or lugdi, is the most expressive garment in the state, because its colour and print announce the occasion. The pomcha is a yellow odhni printed with lotus flowers, given to a woman after the birth of a child and worn at Teej; the lahariya, with its diagonal wave stripes, belongs to the rains and to Teej; the mothra, with its checks, is made when the cloth is tied for lahariya in both directions; and the chunari or bandhej is the common tie and dye.

Ornaments from head to foot

The list of Rajasthani ornaments is long and examiners test it by asking where a named ornament is worn. The safest way to learn it is to go down the body.

The borla, a round ornament worn in the centre of the forehead by married women of Marwar, and the aad, a broad flat neckpiece, are the two most often asked. One rule of custom runs through the whole list: gold is not worn below the waist, so anklets and toe rings are made of silver, while the ornaments of the head, neck and arms may be of gold.

Customs of birth, marriage and death

After a birth the mother performs the jalwa pujan, a worship of the well or of water, and the child is named at the namkaran. The first cutting of a boy's hair, the jadula or mundan, is often vowed at Ramdevra, Khatu Shyamji or Salasar. A boy's first Holi is marked by the dhundh ceremony. At a wedding the maternal uncle brings gifts for his sister's child, a custom called mayra or bhat, and the women of the house keep a ratijaga, a night of folk singing, before the ceremony. The groom strikes the toran fixed above the bride's door before the pheras, and banna and banni songs are sung for the bride and groom. Among some communities a woman may remarry by the custom of nata, and the exchange of brides between two families is called aata-sata; among the Bhils the sum paid to the bride's father is the dapa, and the compensation demanded for an unnatural death is the mautana. After a death the family gives the mosar, a feast, and the pagdi rasm places the turban on the head of the successor. Several old customs have been ended by law: sati was outlawed by the central Act of 1987 and witch-hunting, the dakan pratha, by a Rajasthan Act of 2015.