Originally posted by: JuicyMango
They're also saying britishers gave Indians blouse. What's your sources saying regarding this?
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/miniya-chatterji/choli-ke-peechhe-kya-hai-a-british-hand_a_21454102/
Sarees in India were initially worn without a blouse or a petticoat - there was only a breast band called a ‘Pratidhi’, which was only worn by upper-class women. The culture of wearing blouses came from the British, where the torso of the gown was copied and blouses made.
The bra wasn’t always part of the Indian wardrobe. In fact, ancient Indian paintings and sculptures depict women as topless. The first endemic breast-wrangling garment, the choli, dates to the reign of the eponymous Chola Kingdom, when women wrapped unstitched cloth tightly around their breasts to flatten them and keep them small. During the Vijayanagara Empire that followed, the kanchuka – a tightly fitted bodice – was popular, and throughout the 1300s, there were tailors who specialized in these tight fitting garments.
At the same time, in Kerala, the covering of breasts was closely tied to caste, and lower caste women were forbidden from covering their breasts, until the Channar Revolt which granted them the right to do so, while women in Bengal regularly wore sarees without blouses. It was only with the arrival of the British that the traditional saree blouse as we know it today became a staple in women’s wardrobes.
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