One is amazed at the amount of jewellery worn by the Indian women, yet this vanity is not confined solely to the women, as in some of the provinces nearly every man has a jewel in his ear, and many of them wear most expensive finger-rings. The women excel in the artistic use of jewellery that on other people would seem tawdry and barbaric, but on these dainty little women is most becoming to their rich, dark beauty. Jewellery is not only worn by the lady, but women of every class are covered with it. The village woman will have perhaps but one cotton sari, and her home would be merely a mud hovel, but she will clink as she walks, and you know she wears silver anklets, and as she moves her sari to peep at you, you see the glisten of a bracelet. It may be of brass or it may be of silver, or, if she be very poor, coloured glass bangles will satisfy her cravings for the beautiful, and her arms will be covered with these ornaments from the wrist to the elbow.
At a railway-station near Baroda I saw women whose legs to the knee were covered with huge brass bands that must have been most inconvenient and heavy to carry. In Poona we stopped to watch a merchant of toe-rings place his wares upon his patron’s toes which were held out to him for the purpose. The rings were so tight that soap had to be used to force them over the twinging toes. The operation was most painful to vanity, judging from the faces of the victims, but evidently the sight of the shining ring as they trudged down the dusty road repaid them for the suffering they had undergone. In this same market were innumerable booths for the sale of the glass bracelets that are worn by all the women of India, with the exception of widows. I watched an old woman in the bangle bazaar working them over the hands of the women who sat on the ground in front of her, prepared to spend unlimited time in acquiring these articles of adornment. The purchaser made her choice from the green or gold or red bangles piled carelessly upon the trays in front of her, then the bangle-seller squeezed and manipulated the hand, slowly working, pushing, coaxing the bangle over the hand, until finally it was on the arm, where evidently it would remain.