The two young women above must have been almost celebrities in their day!  Here is a much-reworked post card from a century ago, showing why we can’t trust old printed colours!  It should have been titled Hindu Women, plural, and their skin not tinted so dark. What details of the saree embroidery and background remain are blurred or muddy looking.  This printer likely ”borrowed” the black-and-white photograph below without permission. 

This black-and-white may be only a second or third generation image, showing that the captions were also changed. Labelled Brahmin Women, likely written in ink on a real darkroom negative, the photographer’s other data is barely legible.  Our ladies look much better untinted….   I think the person who sent the post card wrote in German (?) but it’s not a language I ever studied.   The date and place are quite clear - Bombay August 24, 1900.  Is the word “colera” what I’m afraid it is?

How about pink and orange blouses, and a dark green saree instead of reddish?   This is a more attractive copy of a copy than the murky one at the top.  But the blouse on the left was not orange or golden, as yellow and orange shades photograph darker in b/w.  I do like the puffed sleeves better than today’s uncomfortably tight choli sleeves.  The peasant blouse look adds an old fashioned charm, and would help hide the figure flaws some of us have!

All three versions of the post card are the early kind with the back reserved for the mailing address.  That dates their publication to about 1899 through 1905.  Rather than using  old studio photographs some 15+ years after the fact (like Gauhar Jaan and her mother in the red and green cholis that I posted before), these are showing the current Indian fashions.