<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Yes, [saree] is very much Hindu. Hindu scriptures recommend wearing clothes without knot while performing religious ritual. I think they are connected. In MP/Chattisgarh, tribal women wear sari knee length without blouse.
My great grand mother (both side) never wore Salwar and they are from Punjab, Either they used ghagra/ghagri or Sari without front plates. Blouse was not like now a dayâs style which shows stomach, but something like long shirt without collars. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->My sister told me that from what she had read the Sari shows the womb area because that has something to do with Parvati - Shakthi, or Prakriti. Women represent Goddess, Goddess represents creation, hence womb. She said saree was worn the way it was in imitation of this Goddess aspect. This might sound like western anthropological reasoning, but I think it's just a trivial way of explaining one of the Hindu reasons for wearing the Sari.
Could it be that the blouse in Punjab is long because it is colder there? Or just that blouses were an innovation which developed much later anyway, hence it comes in different styles like full and half-torso?
And as a general question, do the women in Punjab wear the Sari like in Gujarat or like in South India or different from both?
'Churidar' is supposed to be 'chudidar'? I've been pronouncing it wrong forever? <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Chudidar-<i>type</i> clothes could well have been used in both India upto Persia, with variations of this kind of dress spanning the ancient Indian-Iranian frontiers even very long ago. Chudidar being the Indian version and perhaps a more baggy-pants version in the Indian part of Afghanistan and maybe onto Persia? Does anyone know what the traditional Zoroastrian dress for women and men is, it might throw more light on this? Then again, if they had many types of clothes for their people to wear, like they do in India, then it would be hard to track down all of what they wore.
Bharatvarsh, I agree about the foreign-sounding nature of foreign words. I don't know any Hindi other than counting 1 to 10 and, of course, the word 'acha' (sp?). But I know how it sounds, as I've heard it a lot including traditional Hindi.
I can generally tell the difference between whether imported words are Iranian or Arabic, but can't figure out whether those Iranian words derived from Arabic since Islamic times, or derived from older Persian like Avesta. That is, whether those Iranian words are of Arabian or Persian origin.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The word comes from the Persian: Ø´ÙÙار, meaning pants, ultimately from Arabic سرÙاÙ, note the inversion of the letters Ù and ر which has happened in the adaptation process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salwar_kameez<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/platts/
For shalwar it gives a Pahlavi origin:
S shalwÄr [Pehl. ÅarvÄr; Zend ÅÄra-vÄra; prob. akin to S. शिरसà¥+à¤à¤°à¤¸à¥], s.m. Trousers, drawers (reaching to the feet), breeches.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Those two sites don't wholly agree. The first says the word Salwar ultimately derives from Arabic, the second (which I find more likely; besides, the first is wackipedia which is essentially unreliable) says it has an Iranian origin. Zend is ancient Iranian if it's the same as what 'Zend Avesta' refers to. Then that could be older than the Arabic.
And most material innovations generally travelled from Persia to Old Arabia (not that Old Arabia had no innovations of its own). Even after Islam, Persian influence and later Iranian influence went to Arabia rather than other way around.
My great grand mother (both side) never wore Salwar and they are from Punjab, Either they used ghagra/ghagri or Sari without front plates. Blouse was not like now a dayâs style which shows stomach, but something like long shirt without collars. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->My sister told me that from what she had read the Sari shows the womb area because that has something to do with Parvati - Shakthi, or Prakriti. Women represent Goddess, Goddess represents creation, hence womb. She said saree was worn the way it was in imitation of this Goddess aspect. This might sound like western anthropological reasoning, but I think it's just a trivial way of explaining one of the Hindu reasons for wearing the Sari.
Could it be that the blouse in Punjab is long because it is colder there? Or just that blouses were an innovation which developed much later anyway, hence it comes in different styles like full and half-torso?
And as a general question, do the women in Punjab wear the Sari like in Gujarat or like in South India or different from both?
'Churidar' is supposed to be 'chudidar'? I've been pronouncing it wrong forever? <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Chudidar-<i>type</i> clothes could well have been used in both India upto Persia, with variations of this kind of dress spanning the ancient Indian-Iranian frontiers even very long ago. Chudidar being the Indian version and perhaps a more baggy-pants version in the Indian part of Afghanistan and maybe onto Persia? Does anyone know what the traditional Zoroastrian dress for women and men is, it might throw more light on this? Then again, if they had many types of clothes for their people to wear, like they do in India, then it would be hard to track down all of what they wore.
Bharatvarsh, I agree about the foreign-sounding nature of foreign words. I don't know any Hindi other than counting 1 to 10 and, of course, the word 'acha' (sp?). But I know how it sounds, as I've heard it a lot including traditional Hindi.
I can generally tell the difference between whether imported words are Iranian or Arabic, but can't figure out whether those Iranian words derived from Arabic since Islamic times, or derived from older Persian like Avesta. That is, whether those Iranian words are of Arabian or Persian origin.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The word comes from the Persian: Ø´ÙÙار, meaning pants, ultimately from Arabic سرÙاÙ, note the inversion of the letters Ù and ر which has happened in the adaptation process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salwar_kameez<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/platts/
For shalwar it gives a Pahlavi origin:
S shalwÄr [Pehl. ÅarvÄr; Zend ÅÄra-vÄra; prob. akin to S. शिरसà¥+à¤à¤°à¤¸à¥], s.m. Trousers, drawers (reaching to the feet), breeches.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Those two sites don't wholly agree. The first says the word Salwar ultimately derives from Arabic, the second (which I find more likely; besides, the first is wackipedia which is essentially unreliable) says it has an Iranian origin. Zend is ancient Iranian if it's the same as what 'Zend Avesta' refers to. Then that could be older than the Arabic.
And most material innovations generally travelled from Persia to Old Arabia (not that Old Arabia had no innovations of its own). Even after Islam, Persian influence and later Iranian influence went to Arabia rather than other way around.