page_title: Dupatta
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dupatta / History
caption_attribution_description: English: War of the Relics of the Buddha Sanchi Stupa 1Southern Gateway
context_page_description: The dupatta is a shawl-like scarf, women's traditionally essential clothing from the Indian subcontinent. The dupatta is currently used most commonly as part of the women's shalwar kameez outfit, and worn over the kurta and the gharara.
context_section_description: Early evidence of the dupatta can be traced to the Indus valley civilization, where the sculpture of a priest-king whose left shoulder is covered with some kind of a chaddar suggests that the use of the dupatta dates back to this early Indic culture.
  Early Sanskrit literature has a wide vocabulary of terms for the veils and scarfs used by women during the ancient period, such as avagunthana (cloak-veil), uttariya (shoulder-veil), mukha-pata (face-veil), and siro-vastra (head-veil). The dupatta is believed to have evolved from the ancient uttariya.
caption: Sanchi Stupa relief: women with dupatta on balconies watching men fighting for buddha relics
exif: {}