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Its funny that western history distorts the history of the rest of the world. I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times. As an Indi
by kumarvvr 4y ago
Its funny that western history distorts the history of the rest of the world.
I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times.
As an Indian, it was practically mandatory for each and every individual to take a bath at-least two times a day. Additionally the following customs were very prevalent till recent times.
1. Washing legs after coming home from outside.
2. Washing hands, face and legs before sitting to eat food.
3. Washing whole body after sex.
4. Washing legs before entering others homes.
5. Leaving footwear outside the *gate* of any home before entering it.
6. A full bath in a river / lake / house tank *before* sunrise and once *before* sunset.
Also, body was supposed to be massaged with oil of sesame seeds (once a week), and greengram flour was rubbed on every part of the body. After sitting in the sun like this for a few minutes, the flour was scrubbed off by hand, and then a hot water bath taken.
For shampoo, two traditional herbs are recommended. Kunkudukai and shikakai. Both are used as it is without any processing. Kunkudukai would be crushed and mixed with water to form a liquid and then applied on head. Amazingly, it would form a lather when rubbed on the head. I remember doing this type of head bath every sunday, until about 2005. Any shampoo was forbidden in our home. The items were dead cheap too.
[Edit]
Kinkudukai is also called soapnut.
https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-soapnuts-for-skin-hair-and-health/ https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-soapnuts-for...
The above site tends to exaggerate the benifits a bit, but it is believed that kunkudukai inhibhits dandruff and is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial.
By personal experience, it tastes absolutely vomit inducing bitter and will burn your eyes to high hell if as much as a diluted drop enters it.
Its a natural, safe and environmentally friendly way of taking a head bath.
- b112 4y ago[flagged]
- aetherson 4y agoWhile the large majority of people were peasants, the ratio obviously wasn't 99,999:1.
- swatcoder 4y agoI don’t think you’re aware of how much any capable person can procure for themselves and their peers, throughout almost all of global history. Peasants may not maintain secure access to everything, but historically it doesn’t take wealth to have a sturdy shelter, water, warmth, and food, and even some luxuries. It’s a little different in modern times, but those basics were mostly available to everyone just through labor and time, of which peasants have quite a lot.
- badpun 4y agoBesides everything else, you also need to not be taxed into oblivion. Which wasn’t a rare practice in premodern times.
- kumarvvr 4y agoIn ancient times, right until the attacks by Islamist marauders and "civilized" Britishers, none of what you have mentioned were an issue. Your statement reeks of colonialist attitudes of seeing natives of other lands as some sort of brutes and degenerates living in destitution in poverty. In India, Every village was in the vicinity of a water source. Every village had a temple, with a large pond. Massaging with oil and flour based cleansing was the staple of almost every household. Oils and Flours were cheap. Most of agricultural products were cheap in India. Portable water was not an issue, because industrialization did not yet happen and most water sources (and hundreds of wells dug around the country) would have clean, drinking water. Did you think a thousand years ago, people used water filters? The only filter that was used was a fine threaded cloth. Fuel for cooking food, as with any country in those times was usually wood, husk or similar material. > barely able to feed themselves Yeah, no. Leaving aside a few famines here and there, India was mostly self sufficient and had plentiful of food. In fact, selling food was considered the gravest sin. It was codified in societal practices that a householder should try to feed at-least one from outside before he has his food. Food donation was considered the highest ideal, even greater than money. > barely a roof over their heads. Most of the population lived in thatched huts or wood beam supported houses constructed from soil based cement like stuff. I assume this was true all over the world. >You are the peasant. No lands for you, you aren't a lord or lady, you're a peon like 99.999% of people. Almost no middle class, and you aren't upper! You're lower class. This is just an ignorant thing to say, without having any knowledge of world history, forget about Indian history. Also reeks of extreme contempt. If you are not aware, this was how most of the world lived. Lower class was the norm. We are now living in an age of disproportionate luxury.
- samarthr1 4y agoSesame oil is the most commonly used oil in traditional cooking. It likely was a staple. A family of four needs about half a days with of cooking oil to have a bath with oil.
- sokoloff 4y agoCould you put some mL estimates on those two measures? It would seem to me that I'd need 50x as much oil to bathe in than I'd need to cook for a half a day, making me think I'm clearly thinking about either the bathing or the cooking quite a bit wrongly.
- mplanchard 4y agoI’d imagine this is talking about more of a sponge bath situation than an immersion situation.
- escape_goat 4y agoWow, you went right ahead and did the thing.
- OJFord 4y agoSesame oil & gram flour are fancy specialist relatively expensive ingredients here (gram flour a bit less so) - but they're grown in India, much more readily available, cheap, and (as another result) used more. Hot water - I assume we're talking about a time period where it would've been heated over fire anywhere in the world.
- pvtAc7 4y agoMarco Polo writes(though south india) Everyone, male and female, washes their whole body twice every day; and those who do not wash are looked down on Dark skin is highly esteemed among these people. ‘When a child is born they anoint him once a week with oil of sesame, and this makes him grow much darker’
- jogjayr 4y agoYeah the oil and hot water sounds crazy over-the-top. But India is a tropical country that's mostly warm year-round. Everyone probably took a dip in a nearby river, lake, or pond every day. Or took a bucket bath with well water, which would have been perfectly warm enough. This isn't possible, or at least far more uncomfortable, in most European countries due to their climate. Plus you sweat way more in the tropics, so daily bathing is an absolute necessity to feel human.
- malx0x 4y agoBy personal experience, it's a shame those customs didn't continue.
- dang 4y agoWe've banned this account. Creating accounts to break the site guidelines will eventually get your main account banned too, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ralusek 4y agoIndians definitely still have certain specific hygiene practices that Westerners don't. Anybody who has worked at a large tech company will have taken note of the tooth brushes in the bathrooms. I found this to be very confusing at first, but then I noticed that a good amount of my Indian coworkers would brush their teeth after lunch.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoI don’t think this is an Indian thing, western dentists recommend brushing teeth after each meal.
- LtWorf 4y agoBut people just keep their brush in their own desk :D
- tremon 4y agoCuriously enough, mine doesn't. In fact, he explicitly recommends against it, since the tooth enamel is weakened by food and saliva, and brushing immediately after a meal scrapes off the weakened enamel. Instead, he says it's best to wait half an hour between the meal and brushing the teeth.
- pmontra 4y agoI'm a westerner and of course I brush my teeths after having had food. Why should I brush them if they are clean?
- NeoTar 4y agoInterpreting “after having food” as immediately after eating (which may be unfair to you!) then the American Dental Association disagree with you: > Brushing Right After Eating > If you feel the need to clean your teeth after eating or drinking, wait at least 60 minutes before brushing—especially if you have had something acidic like lemons, grapefruit or soda. Drink water or chew sugarless gum with the ADA Seal of Acceptance to help clean your mouth while you are waiting to brush. https://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/brushing-mistakes-slideshow https://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/brushing-mistakes-slideshow
- samarthr1 4y agoWasn't Nandi's advice three baths and one meal?
- kumarvvr 4y agoYeah, but only for monks. Not for householders or the like. A person who eats 3 meals a day is a rogi (Diseased) A person who eats 2 meals a day is a bhogi (A content, satisfied person) A person who eats 1 meal a day is a yogi (A person on the path to spiritual bliss)
- eru 4y agoKeep in mind that India was and is a huge and diverse place. A unified India did not exist until fairly recently. Neither as a political entity nor as a culture one.
- kumarvvr 4y agoThis is blatantly false. A western trope resounding forever. Culturally India was a unified entity for millenia. As in, perhaps not having a unified government, but having the same cultural and literary background throughout the region. Ancient texts like Ramayana and Mahabharata talk about various places and practices across the length and breadth of India, which are remarkably similar and have a unified core. The greatest temples of Hinduism are not concentrated in one place, but spread over the entirety of the continent. And those are ancient temples. From Saraswati Temple in Kashmir to the Bhagavathi temple in Kanya Kumari. The idea that India was not a cultural entity was a British invention
- prox 4y agoYeah, this is also what I gathered from speaking to people from India, and my own research. Brahmanism/ belief in the vedas was pretty widespread and sanskrit is with a few local exceptions the “Latin” of India. As far as I know there was relatively little iconoclasm as most follow up empires usually respected what came before. The exception might by in the deep south? Not sure. Ofcourse this changed somewhat with islamism and British rule. Those two things reformed a lot in the identities of people during time up till now.
- origin_path 4y agoBut surely by that definition Europe was also a unified entity in the medieval period.
- kumarvvr 4y ago
- 4y ago
- danmaz74 4y ago> I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times. Which western kids did you hear from? Every western kid I know studied that in Roman times bathing was a very important activity; as a matter of fact there were very advanced public baths, thermae (which included "sauna" with hot and cold water) in every city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae
- valtism 4y agoIn my experience, a lot of western kids I know believe that bathing was almost non-existent in medieval times.
- p3rls 4y ago
- hef19898 4y agoTo bad for the Romans the wormhole did lead to the Samurai era. Space-time and tank barrel cutting Katanas would have prevented the fall of the Empire.
- rendall 4y ago> Its funny that western history distorts the history of the rest of the world. Is it? "Non-western history" more accurately portrays the history of the rest of the world?
- honkdaddy 4y agoThere’s a bizarre fantasy I see a lot of self-hating westerners reference which is that their hygiene and bathing practices were learned from other societies, which from what I’ve read from and what this article shows, is clearly a complete fiction. Still though, searching “who taught Europeans how to bathe” will confidently return you lots of articles like https://sawarimi.org/archives/2893 https://sawarimi.org/archives/2893 In which the author confidently states that it was only due to African influence that Europeans ever learned about hygiene. It’s a nice idea, maybe? But it’s just completely made up.