KOLI WOMEN 177 



is the most dressy of women. She is always well- 

 dressed even on common days. The bareness of 

 her limbs may perhaps shock our notions of pro- 

 priety at first, for, being a mud-wader of necessity, 

 like the stork and the heron, she girds her garments 

 about her very tightly indeed ; but this only sets 

 off her wonderfully erect and athletic figure, while 

 her well-set head looks all the nicer that it has no 

 covering except her own neatly-bound hair. She 

 never draws her saree coyly over her head, like other 

 native women, when she meets a man. On this 

 day there is no change in the fashion of her costume 

 (that never changes), but she puts on her brightest 

 dress, blue, or red, or lemon yellow, with all her 

 private jewellery, and decks her hair with a small 

 chaplet of bright flowers. 



Her children are tricked out with more fancy. 

 The little brown girl, who yesterday had not one 

 square inch of cloth on the whole of her tiny person, 

 comes out a petite miss in a crimson bodice and a 

 white skirt, with her shining black hair oiled and 

 combed and plaited and decked with flowers, and 

 her neck and arms and feet twinkling with orna- 

 ments. Her brother of six or seven looks as if he 

 were going to a fancy-dress ball in the character of 

 His Highness the Holkar. His small head is set in 

 a great three-cornered Maratha turban, and his 

 body, a stranger to the feel of clothes, is masked 

 in a resplendent purple jacket. The young men of 

 the village, such of them as are not gone a-fishing, 



