Upper body clothing ...

[Das Menon]

In Kerala the traditional attaire of the male is "dhothi" and
"angavasthram". Traditionally the angavasthram is removed from one's
shoulder and tied around the waist before entering temples etc. Today , as
far as I know, all temples allow the male to keep the angavasthram over the
upper boady, except for the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum, which
is still a private temple belonging to the Trivandrum royal family.

But in the temples of Northern India, once enters the temples fully clothed! 

I have no idea whether this is related to the Buddhist custom.

Regards....Das

>On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Peter J. Claus wrote:
>
> A colleague asked me about the significance of the
> repeated phrase in a particular Buddhist sutra.  It
> begins each of the discourses of the Buddha, after he
> arrived at a meeting place and is greeted.  The phrase
> is translated:
>  
> "He (the questioner) bared his right shoulder and
> clasped his hands ...."
>  
> What is the significance of "baring the right
> shoulder"?  It is not, to my knowledge, a practice
> found generally in India today, nor even in
> ethnographic literature.  
>