NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 17 Fig. 5.7 — LET’S EXPLORE

Almost all of them will. Anyone who has been in a house on the morning of a wedding has seen this scene. Here is what the painting actually shows.

• The bride wears a sari, with the loose end drawn up over her head and pinned, over a full-sleeved blouse. The women around her wear saris the same way.
• Gold jewellery, being put on then and there — one woman is holding out a bangle for her, another is fastening something at her shoulder. The bride already wears necklaces, earrings and a fine ornament along the parting of her hair.
• Flowers — a long strand of white flowers hangs beside the low table.
• Silver vessels and a lamp stand on a round table draped with cloth, with folded clothes beside them.
• The women of the household are dressing the bride together. Nobody is doing this alone; three of them are helping and one is watching. This is a family ceremony, not a private one.
• The setting is the inner part of a stone house with arched doorways.
• The painter is Raja Ravi Varma, one of India’s best-known painters, from Travancore in present-day Kerala.

Every one of these is familiar from weddings across India — the sari, the pallu over the head, the gold, the flowers, the silver lamp, and above all the crowd of aunts and sisters getting the bride ready.

That by the time this was painted, a Parsi wedding morning looked like an Indian wedding morning. The clothes, the ornaments, the flowers, the vessels and the custom of the household women dressing the bride are all local. Nothing in the room says “Persia”.

Three conclusions you can safely draw.

• The community had become Indian in its way of life. The Parsis reached the Gujarat coast between the 8th and 10th centuries. By the 19th century, when Ravi Varma painted this, roughly a thousand years had passed — and the painting shows the result. The chapter says it in words: “They combined their ancient traditions with those of the local culture.”
• Its faith stayed its own. The picture shows a wedding, not a temple, so we cannot see the religion in it — but the chapter tells us the sacred fire “continues to burn in Udvada”, and that India now holds the largest Zoroastrian population in the world. Custom became Indian; belief remained Zoroastrian.
• Other Indians saw them as part of the picture — literally. Ravi Varma painted brides of many Indian communities. A Parsi bride is here among them, painted with the same care, as one Indian subject among others.