Old Indian anklets
Foot ornaments play an important role in India, particularly in rural areas where people usually walk barefoot. Like all the other jewelry in India, anklets and paizebh (chains for the ankle) are specific for an ethnic group or province and therefore an identification mark. This is the reason why there is such a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
In general, foot jewellery is made of silver or of base metals, because the body below the waistline is supposed to be impure. However, Royal and rich ladies did wear gold and gems on their foot.
Why Indian woman wear anklets?
- Anklets are part of the dowry a woman receives, as part of the economic agreement between the couple’s families. As jewelry received at marriage is the only property a woman was allowed to own in India until recently, the more and bigger, the better. Thus silver anklets could be quite heavy, with some examples weighing more than 1,5 kg each! The heavy weight of the anklet is not felt as a burden by the women, and they are rather proud of their ownership.
- Untracht (see literature below) explains that sometimes the anklets were put on a bride to prevent her from running away in Orisha (Kondh brides). These bronze anklets can weigh 9 to 13 kg. After some days when the wife got used to the new situation, anklets were removed and kept as family heirloom.
- Ganguly (see literature below) and other authors refer also to the sound that most of the anklets do when walking (also the rigid examples, filled sometimes with small pellets) The noise help to chase away snakes while working on the fields or walking through the jungle barefoot.
- Indian literature also provides a more poetic explanation: the tinkling sound that a woman’s anklets made as she approached her lover would fill him with anticipation… (Barnard, see literature below)
Check Ethnic Adornment’s archives for more examples of Indian anklets
Types of Indian anklets
Indian anklets can mainly be divided into two groups: rigid and flexible. Both types can be worn at the same time, in a preestablished order until it reaches the border of the skirt. Ladies in traditional Central India usually wear several flexible and rigid anklets on each leg at the same time (see drawing by T.H. Hendley with the different anklets and denominations).
Some of the rigid types are amazing, in size and design. Some of them represent two animal heads confronted (like the makara anklets that accompany this article). Bracelets and anklets with the archaic theme of confronting pairs of animal heads that guard the opening are believed to have originated in the Near East in the 8th century BC and the concept spread East and West from there.
Although flexible seem more frivolous, they can weight a lot. Some examples are quite ornated and they generally have little bells (ghungru) attached. When the feet are adorned with red mehndi the combination is stricking!
Nowadays rural women still wear rigid and flexible anklets. City ladies, on the other hand, prefer to wear flexible anklets.
Information gathered from:
“Traditional jewelry of India”, Untracht, Oppi, Harry N. Abrams. Inc publishers, 1997
“Indian Folk jewellery”, Ganguly, Waltraud, B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2015
“Ethnic jewellery from Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands”, The pepin Press, 2002
“Indian Jewellery”, Barnard, N., V&A Publishing, 2008.
