Jata

A long matted lock of hair. Ascetics
often wear their hair in jatas for a number of religious and symbolic reasons.
On one level, the uncut hair is a symbol
of renunciation; its unkempt, matted
quality demonstrates the ascetic’s
distance from worldly concerns with
order and propriety. On another level,
ascetics wear jatas in imitation of the
god Shiva, the paradigmatic ascetic,
who is always portrayed wearing his hair
in matted locks. Although jatas are most
commonly worn by devotees (bhakta)
of Shiva, some strict renunciants who
are devotees of the god Vishnu also
favor this hairstyle. Finally, from a nonreligious perspective, jatas are simply a
very low-maintenance hairstyle. They
are usually rubbed with wood ash to
keep them relatively neat; as the hair
grows the jatas simply become longer,
and in many cases they can be neatly
twisted into a crown, or jatamakuta, on
the top of the head.