Stanapatta
A band of cloth worn across the chest in early Indian dress, before the stitched blouse.
Also: stanapatta, breast band
Stanapatta is a Sanskrit name for a breast band, a strip of cloth worn across the chest in early Indian dress. It appears in sculpture and in texts, along with the antariya and the uttariya. It is one of the garments that sit behind the modern blouse, though the stitched blouse is of much later date and developed through contact between Indian and other styles. Many women in India went without a blouse until the nineteenth century, and bare upper bodies were normal in much of the country, depending on the place and the community.