hey only keep their legs well together when they
sit or kneel." (E.T. Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, 1872, p. 66.)
Of the Naga women of Assam it is said: "Of clothing there was not
much to see; but in spite of this I doubt whether we could excel
them in true decency and modesty. Ibn Muhammed Wali had already
remarked in his history of the conquest of Assam (1662-63), that
the Naga women only cover their breasts. They declare that it is
absurd to cover those parts of the body which everyone has been
able to see from their births, but that it is different with the
breasts, which appeared later, and are, therefore, to be covered.
Dalton (_Journal of the Asiatic Society_, Bengal, 41, 1, 84) adds
that in the presence of strangers Naga women simply cross their
arms over their breasts, without caring much what other charms
they may reveal to the observer. As regards some clans of the
naked Nagas, to whom the Banpara belong, this may still hold
good." (K. Klemm, "Peal's Ausflug nach Banpara," _Zeitschrift fuer
Ethnologie_, 1898, Heft 5, p. 334.)
"In Ceylon, a woman always bathes in public streams, but she
never removes all her clothes. She washes under the cloth, bit by
bit, and then slips on the dry, new cloth, and pulls out the wet
one from underneath (much in the same sliding way as servant
girls and young women in England). This is the common custom in
India and the Malay States. The breasts are always bare in their
own houses, but in the public roads are covered whenever a
European passes. The vulva is never exposed. They say that a
devil, imagined as a white and hairy being, might have
intercourse with them." (Private communication.)
In Borneo, "the _sirat_, called _chawal_ by the Malays, is a
strip of cloth a yard wide, worn round the loins and in between
the thighs, so as to cover the pudenda and perinaeum; it is
generally six yards or so in length, but the younger men of the
present generation use as much as twelve or fourteen yards
(sometimes even more), which they twist and coil with great
precision round and round their body, until the waist and stomach
are fully enveloped in its folds." (H. Ling Roth, "Low's Natives
of Borneo," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1892, p.
36.)
"In their own houses in the depths of the forest the Dwarfs are
said to n
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