Anklet - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An anklet, also called ankle chain or ankle bracelet, is an ornament

Jewellery

Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...

worn around the ankle

Ankle

The ankle joint is formed where the foot and the leg meet. The ankle, or talocrural joint, is a synovial hinge joint that connects the distal ends of the tibia and fibula in the lower limb with the proximal end of the talus bone in the foot...

. Barefoot anklets and toe rings historically have been worn for centuries by girls and women in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

both casual and more formal anklets became fashionable in the late twentieth century. While in western popular culture both younger men and women may wear casual leather

Leather

Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...

anklets, they are popular among barefoot

Barefoot

Barefoot is the state of not wearing any footwear. Being barefoot is regarded as a human's natural state, though for functional, fashion and social reasons footwear is worn, at least on some occasions...

women. Formal anklets (of silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

, gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

, or beads) are used by some women as fashion jewelry. Anklets are an important piece of jewelry in Indian marriages worn along with sari

Sari

A sari or sareeThe name of the garment in various regional languages include: , , , , , , , , , , , , , is a strip of unstitched cloth, worn by females, ranging from four to nine metres in length that is draped over the body in various styles. It is popular in India, Bangladesh, Nepal,...

s.

Much more rarely, an ankle chain is joined by a stretch of chain to limit the step. This practice was once more prevalent in the South East Asia, where the effect was to give a 'feminine' short tripping step. Today a few western women follow this practice, but rarely in public. Very few people even have 'permanent', e.g. soldered-on, ankle chains, and more rarely still, so is the connecting chain.

Europe

Bronze anklets are visible as early as the Bronze Age in temperate Europe, in an area roughly along the Danube, in the Alpine foreland, up the Rhine to the Atlantic, and also down the Rhône (Sherratt, 2001). These were found among hoards in these areas, along with other bronze items characteristic of this time (c. 1800 BCE onwards), and are attributable to the Tumulus culture that spread across this region.

South Asia

A first-century CE epic of Tamil literature

Tamil literature

Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution...

called Cilappatikaram
Cilappatikaram
Silappatikaram Silappatikaram has been dated to likely belong to the beginning of Christian era, although the author might have built upon a pre-existing folklore to spin this tale. The story involves the three Tamil kingdoms of the ancient era, the Chola, the Pandya and the Chera...

("The story of the anklet") dealt with a woman whose husband was killed while trying to sell one of her anklets to a dishonest goldsmith. The anklets are described in great detail in the poem.

Rajasthani

Rajasthan

Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...

women wear the heaviest type of anklets, they are silver and signify tribals adherence. The women wear this for costume jewelry but also to show their bravery as a tribe against other rival tribes. The fashion for heavy anklets is declining in India now but is still common in the rural areas.

The word jhangheer is a word for the anklet in Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

and Punjabi

Punjabi language

Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...

. Jhangheer means chains. This is significant in that the anklet was a chain the woman wore in her marriage. Some of the anklets were heavy and difficult to walk in. The woman was reminded she was in chains and her husband her owner.

As an ornament

Anklets can be made of silver

Silver

, gold

Gold

, and other less precious metals as well as leather

Leather

, plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

, nylon

Nylon

Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides, first produced on February 28, 1935, by Wallace Carothers at DuPont's research facility at the DuPont Experimental Station...

and other such materials. In the western world anklets or ankle chains are mainly worn by younger females, but some older women also wear them.

Metal anklets are of two types - flexible and inflexible. The flexible ones, often called paayal, pajeb or jhanjhar

Jhanjhar

Jhanjhar or Jhajhar or Jhajhad is gotra of Jat people found in Bhilwara, Hanumangarh districts in Rajasthan, India. Jhanjhars have been associated with jat folk-deity Tejaji.- Village Paner :...

in India

India

, are made by tying links in a chain. Subsequently, sonorous bells

Bell (instrument)

A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...

can be attached to the chain, so that the wearer can make pleasing sounds while walking. Inflexible ones are usually created by giving shape to a flat metal sheet.

The sound was also a reminder for people that there was a woman around, during the times of Purdah

Purdah

Purdah or pardeh is the practice of concealing women from men. According to one definition:This takes two forms: physical segregation of the sexes, and the requirement for women to cover their bodies and conceal their form....

.

Within the cuckold and hotwife sexual subcultures, the anklet is worn as indicate of participation in said.

Salangai or Ghunghru

Ghungroo

A Ghungroo, also known as Ghunghroo or Ghunghru or Salangai is one of many small metallic bells strung together to form Ghungroos, a musical anklet tied to the feet of classical Indian dancers. The sounds produced by Ghungroos vary greatly in pitch depending on their metallic composition and size...

are small bells that bharatnatyam, kathak

Kathak

Kathak is one of the eight forms of Indian classical dances, originated from Uttar Pradesh, India. This dance form traces its origins to the nomadic bards of ancient northern India, known as Kathaks, or storytellers...

, kuchipudi

Kuchipudi

Kuchipudi is a Classical Indian dance form Andhra Pradesh, India. It is also popular all over South India. Kuchipudi is the name of a village in the Divi Taluka of Krishna district that borders the Bay of Bengal and with resident Brahmins practicing this traditional dance form, it acquired the...

, and odissi

Odissi

Odissi, also spelled Orissi , is one of the eight classical dance forms of India. It originates from the state of Orissa, in eastern India. It is the oldest surviving dance form of India on the basis of archaeological evidences. The classic treatise of Indian dance, Natya Shastra, refers to it as...

dancers tie around their ankles.

Left or right?

In India

India

, anklets are worn on both ankles. However, outside India most anklets seem to be worn on the right ankle. Perhaps this is due to more people being right-handed. Although in eastern cultures, anklets are worn on both ankles.

In scuba diving

Scuba divers sometimes wear lead anklets

Diving weighting system

Divers wear weighting systems, weight belts or weights, generally made of lead, to counteract the buoyancy of other diving equipment, such as diving suits and aluminium diving cylinders...

to stop a tendency for their legs to float up when diving in a drysuit.

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