Complemented to sisters of our PSVP group Memebers
Sangam literature to put it simply is a veritable goldmine of information providing us with a glimpse into the romances, marriages, dress, ornamentation, culinary fare and religious life of the early Tamils before they came under Aryan influence.
As for ornamentation, it would appear that the Tamil women of yore were a highly cultured lot and took great pains to adorn their persons with a variety of ornament.
The Silappadigaram gives an exhaustive list of ornaments worn by an actress including a waist girdle of two and thirty strings of lustrous pearls, various kinds of necklaces consisting of strings of beautiful beads and pendent golden leaves, ear-rings set with large diamonds and sapphires, armlets made of brilliant gems and pearls, bracelets of gold and coral, finger-rings set with precious stones, anklets including one resembling a string of pearls extending from the ankle to the big toe and little toe-rings.
The tali or neck ornament was evidently known, but whether it meant the Mangala Sutra or marriage badge of Tamil women as is the case now is uncertain. Rather, it would appear from Sangam literature that the term tali referred to any neck ornament whose purpose was not purely decorative, which is to say that it may have also had some ritual or talismanistic value.
The Nedunalvadai of Nakkirar, one of the ten idylls known as the Pattup-pattu describes the Queen as wearing a long-pointed tali lying loosely on her bosom. Nose ornaments which figure so prominently in the ornamentation of modern-day Tamil women are however conspicuously absent in Sangam literature and this is perhaps the only respect in which the Tamil women of yore could not excel in adornment their modern-day counterparts whose nose-studs and nose-rings give them a charm which few other ornaments can match.