1923.] Uhe Nose-ring as an Indian Ornament. 6Y 
is based on puns on words which are purely Gujarati either by 
corruption or otherwise, thus :— 
arat (vali) Guj.=a nose-ring ; aif@ (vali) Skr.=the father 
of the monkey Angada. 
Hw (mesa) (from Sanskrit wat ay (mesa) =a ram. 
(mast)=collyrium used for 
painting the evelashes. 
Facat (savarani) = (Skr. #arstat atafa=the son of want 
(sammarjanz) through several (Savarna). 
stages (in Prakr. and 
=a broom. 
I must therefore summarily reject this verse as an affront 
to scholarship. 
Now, how do we account for the absence of the nose-ring 
in ancient India? My belief is that this was due to the fact 
that the nose-ring wasa Moslem importation, and that, origin- 
ally a symbol of slavery, this nose-ring was invested with a 
different value, as a mark of adornment of the human frame. 
Would it be permissible to guess that the woman’s nose-ring 
has a sinister significance of the slave-like condition of woman 
in the days of degraded civilization, and its conversion into 
an ornament was a soothing unction meant to flatter female 
vanity? That this nose-boring (as also ear-boring) was an 
indication of slavery in Arabia and other parts is an admitted 
and well-known fact. This was known in India as late as 
V.S. 1685 (A.D. 1629) as is seen from the following verse in 
a Jaina writer’s work in the Gujarati of his days :— 
qj aa av vere; 
qe Fat ei ACU ae ? 
qe 7a wast qa ey, 
wISt ara GCs ATU. 
(Hiravijaya Stiri-Rasa, XXVIII, 9.) 
The verse refers to an incident in the life of the Jaina 
Saint Hiravijaya ; a pupil of his rebelled against him, and the 
pupi! was addressed by a mounted policeman as above; the 
verse therefore contains a mixture of bad Urdu and Gujarati. 
The policeman says: You are his pupil, and he your master ; 
how dare you defy your guru? The guru has power to lead 
you by the arm (to the slave market) and sell you, and to 
bore your nose and pass a nose-string through it. 
ied in M a’s Prabandha-cintamani, but forms 
eta ee pees in a translation of the latter 
work by one Dinandtha SAastri. 
