Pandya Nadu · Eastern Coastal Plains
Two things define dress here and both are bought by weight or by length rather than by the piece — a resist-dyed cotton sari counted in knots, and jasmine counted in muzham, the measure from elbow to fingertip. The tie-dye came with a westward-migrating weaving community that also brought its own language; the jasmine is an agricultural commodity with a daily auction behind it. Neither is ceremonial. Both are worn on an ordinary Tuesday.
What is worn
A light cotton sari patterned in small resist-dyed dots, worn as daily wear across the region and treated as the correct thing to give at a family occasion. Cool enough for the heat, which is why it survived.
Worn for: Everyday and festival
The white cotton veshti worn folded to the knee for work and let down to the ankle for a temple or an elder, with a shirt over it and a towel across the shoulder that does duty as everything from a seat to a sunshade.
Worn for: Everyday
The half-sari — skirt, blouse and a draped upper cloth — worn between childhood and the sari, and still common in this region at family functions where it has largely lapsed elsewhere.
Worn for: Festivals and family events
Jasmine tied on banana fibre and bought by the muzham at a street stall or a market. What looks decorative is a daily consumable with a commodity price attached to it that moves several hundred per cent across the year.
Worn for: Daily
Weaves and textiles
Cotton resist-dyed by tying thousands of tiny knots — a single sari can carry more than twenty thousand — each of which resists the dye and leaves a dot. Brought by Saurashtrian weavers who settled in Madurai under Nayak patronage. Registered as a geographical indication on 12 December 2005, under application number 21 — among the earliest Indian registrations. The spelling Chungudi seen in shops is the same textile, not a second one.
Plain and checked cotton yardage from the villages along the Vaigai, much of it now sold as generic "Madurai cotton" without any mark of origin.
The offset and screen-printing capacity built up for match labels and firework wrappers spilled into textile printing, which is why a dry town with no weaving tradition prints a great deal of cloth.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Pandya Nadu — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (7)