Men do not wear any
ornaments except flowers and perhaps a bracelet of akar bahar,
a black sort of coral supposed to prevent rheumatism, but women
love jewellery and it is extraordinary that outside of dancers
or children the Balinese are one of the rare people in the world
that do not wear necklaces. In ancient times men and women wore
ear-rings, and ancient statues show that, like the Dayaks of Borneo,
they distended their ear-lobes until they hung below the shoulders,
weighted down by heavy gold ornaments. Today some men have pierced
ears because when children they wore leaf-shaped ear-ornaments
(rumbing) of gold set with precious stones.
Little girls distend the holes of their ear-lobes with rolls of
dry leaf or with a nutmeg seed until the hole is large enough
to receive the large rolls of lontar leaf for everyday or their
replicas of gold (subang) for feasts. The subangs are hollow conical
cylinders of beaten gold three inches long by one ih diameteri
closed at one end, imitating in shape the palm-leaf subang. Only
girls wear them and-after marriage they consider the wearing of
subangs a coquetry that is out of place, although married women-,
of high caste may wear them at feasts. Rings of gold set with
rubies are popular, but the most fashionable today are those set,
if with an English gold guinea. Bracelets are in good taste only
made of gold and tortoise-shell set with rubies, star sapphires,
or little diamonds.
The Balinese are as fastidious in the care of their bodies as
they are about dress, and people of all classes, conditions permitting,
make almost a cult of cleanliness. They bathe frequency, during
the day, whenever they feel hot or after strenuous work, but two
baths a day are the rule, in the morning and evening “before
each meal. Many villages have formal baths with separate compartments
for men and women, divided by carved stone walls and provided
with water-spouts in the shape of fantastic animals, or some natural
pools or streams fitted with bamboo pipes and low. Often the favorite
bathing-place is a shallow spot in the river,” where men
on one side, women on the other, squat on the what remaining for
a long time in animated conversation, scrubbing themselves with
pumice stone that removes superfluous hair a invigorates the skin,
or rubbing their backs with a rough stone or against a large stone
placed there for the purpose.
There are strict rules of etiquette for bathing-places; for example,
sexual parts should be concealed even among persons of the same
sex. A man simply covers himself with one hand offend his fellow
bathers. It would be unthinkable for a man to look deliberately
at a nude woman although she may be bathing within sight of everybody
in the irrigation ditch along the road. It is customary to give,
some indication of one's presence on approaching a public bath.
Women wade into the water raising their skirts to a respectable
level, a little above the knee, and after considering the possibility
of the sit suddenly in the water, quickly taking off the skirt.
Tie process 'is' reversed in getting out of the water: the skirt
which has been lying on a stone or held in one band is gathered
up in front of the bather and dropped like a curtain as she stands
up. She wraps it around her hips and walks off without bothering
to dry herself.
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