It was formerly fastened with strings, but now with the ghundi (the old form of button) and tukmah or loop. In southern India, Gujarat and in the United Provinces the arid is much the same as to length and fit as the English shirt; as the traveller goes northward from Delhi to the Afghan border he sees the kurta becoming longer and looser till he finds the Pathan wearing it almost to his ankles, with very full wide sleeves.
After the Arab conquest the name was retained both as the designation of a definite province and in a looser sense.
The lines of cardinal importance are (I) the rasceta or cross sulci, which isolate the hand from the forearm at the wrist, and which are the flexion folds between the looser forearm skin and that tied down to the fascia above the level of the anterior annular ligament.
The surface of the thallus often exhibits outgrowths in the form of warts, hairs, &c. The medullary layer, which usually forms the main part of the thallus, is distinguished from the cortical layer by its looser consistence and the presence in it of numerous, large, air-containing spaces.
In a looser sense the word is employed to denote abstinence from certain kinds of food merely; and this meaning, which in ordinary usage is probably the more prevalent, seems also to be at least tolerated by the Church of England when it speaks of " fast or abstinence days," as if fasting and abstinence were synonymous.
