This reminds me of a Anecdote. When I was doing my schooling at Ramakrishna Mission School (Main) Chennai, I had wonderful Tamil vaadhiyar, his name is Mahalingam..
He used to tell us, women deprived men of everything from starting to now, except beard and moustache (eighteen years years back, may be now the situation is different).
Warrior men used to have flowers to identify the troop, which went to women. Metti, went to women. Not to speak about dresses, Shirt, T-Shirt and Pants. Aabaranam's became theirs. Thiking in this lines Thali..could also have been trasfer of property rights....
There was a program in 'Makkal TV' sometime back arguing about the relevance of Thali in today's world. Its not just about convenience but what 'Thali' has come to represent in our society. Very interesting discussions.
But from what I have read, Thali (for that matter, saree/blouse) itself was not part of our culture as it existed in the intial centuries. They were later additions and I believe the Muslim invasion was a strong reason to cover up and mark your females. But it might have happened a bit earlier itself. Blouses('ravikkai'??) were introduced by the Christian missionaries worried about the modesty of the native people (atleast, thats the case in Southern Tamilnadu and Travancore), before such things as 'preistly abuses'(lighten up!).
If you read through Marxist literature, Thali is primarily identified as a male device to convert a female into property an interesting take on the evolution of this mentality and how Thali came into being.
That aside, my personal opinions were shaped by the numerous Tamil movies with 'Thali' climaxes which essentially has made me sick of the importance given and the intolerable sentiments associated with it.
Muthu, extremely well said . My grandmother from kerala has great funny real stories on evolution of the blouse, some of them too candid for this forum. As far as thali goes atleast among brahmins the seetha kalyanm that the kanyadan sloka refers to had no thali. In fact Rama wore a ring and sita a hair ornament given by thir fathers in honor of the wedding. A symbol is fine as long as both man and woman wear it. But a one sided symbol combined with sentiment and convenience based religios beliefs are funny to say the least.