🇱🇰 The sarees of Sri Lanka
4 sarees from Sri Lanka, best known first, across 2 centres and states.
The Osariya goes by Kandyan dress too. It belongs to Sri Lanka's Sinhalese, and the country counts it as the national dress. A relative of the sari, it comes from the Kandyan kingdom, where upper-class women wore it. Its blouse is full, hiding the middle, and the drape ends in a ruffle.
- The Osariya, also called the Kandyan dress, is Sri Lanka's national dress.
- It belongs to the Sinhalese and took shape in the Kandyan kingdom.
- A full blouse with puffed sleeves covers the midriff; the wrap ends in a frill.
- Scholars dispute whether the Nayake dynasty or South and Southeast Asian links formed it.
- Anagarika Dharmapala wanted a ten-riyan cloth, ten cubits, worn as Osariya.
Sarees in Sri Lanka
The Osariya is the island's own wrapped dress, worn by women of the Sinhalese community and treated as the dress the country calls national. It arose in the Kandyan kingdom among its Sinhalese people, and in that period it belonged to women of the upper class. Where its shape came from is argued over. One line of thought credits the Nayake dynasty of Kandy with settling its final form. Another holds that dress of the Kandyan court was shaped by contact with South India and mainland Southeast Asia. Its cut sets it apart from the sari familiar elsewhere: a blouse with puffed sleeves and full coverage, tucked in part at the front, and a length that finishes in a frill.
How it is worn
The Osariya goes on as a wrap. Its blouse is full and covers the middle of the body all the way across, folded in partway at the front, and the sleeves are puffed. The cloth itself is long, measured in riyans, a riyan being a cubit. The wrap finishes in a frill. It is put on for work and for weddings, and its style shifts a good deal with the occasion.
Weddings, festivals and daily wear
Women wear the Osariya for ordinary work and for weddings, so it is not kept back for special days alone. Its look changes with the occasion, plainer in one setting and more dressed in another, and the same garment serves both. The cloth length and the frill stay constant while the finish is adjusted.
The saree today
Today the Osariya holds the place of Sri Lanka's national dress, a status argued for early in the twentieth century. Anagarika Dharmapala, swayed by Victorian ideas of morality, set out what he thought right for women: a blouse that hid the chest, stomach and back, and a length of ten riyans, a riyan being a cubit, worn as the Osariya or as a sari. He was just as hard on Western dress for men.
The facts in this overview come from the Wikipedia article "Osariya", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. EveryPallu rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Sarong: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source