Iban Traditional
IBAN TRADITIONAL CLOTHING AND ATTIRE
SIRAT : THE FORGOTTEN IBAN ATTIRE
The loincloths was once of the most basic markers of cultural identity, is now distinctively ignored among modern Ibans. Even the so called expert such as the anthropologists give a word or two regarding it, then pass on to other matters. The writers on customs seems to forgot the topics altogether. For as the Dutchman Karl Martin said of the Sulawesi loincloth a hundred years ago, “once it’s on it’s hard to figure out how it got that way.” Some may thinks, a paper on the loincloth ought to be brief and cover only the essentials. Yet just as we wear clothes for more reasons than mere utility, and dress decorates as much as it hides, the subject of the loincloth furnishes an occasion for remarks on history, culture, and psychology.
The reasons why it did not attracts any attention of the scholar, though the purpose of the loincloth is to cover the male genitals, it leaves the buttocks bare. Most peoples feel shame about all or part of the genitals; but it seems to be a peculiarly western trait to feel equal shame about the buttocks, probably from a fear of homosexuality, an anxiety which also seems to grow with civilization. Hence, westerners have always considered the loincloth an immodest garment.
The loincloth is a garment of great antiquity, the original men’s clothing of most of the world, and particularly of the Malayo-Polynesian area, which includes the islands of the Pacific Ocean as far east as Hawaii and as far south as New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines, the Malay peninsula, the island of Madagascar to the west, and mainland places inhabited by such Dayak-like peoples as the Mnongs of Vietnam, the Mru of Bangladesh and the Nagas of Assam. On the continent west of India the loincloth is unknown. In Malaya, Java, Bali, and elsewhere, the loincloth was replaced by the skirtlike kain because of Hindu influence,while the sarong (a sewn tube of cloth) is an Islamic
SIRAT : THE FORGOTTEN IBAN ATTIRE
The loincloths was once of the most basic markers of cultural identity, is now distinctively ignored among modern Ibans. Even the so called expert such as the anthropologists give a word or two regarding it, then pass on to other matters. The writers on customs seems to forgot the topics altogether. For as the Dutchman Karl Martin said of the Sulawesi loincloth a hundred years ago, “once it’s on it’s hard to figure out how it got that way.” Some may thinks, a paper on the loincloth ought to be brief and cover only the essentials. Yet just as we wear clothes for more reasons than mere utility, and dress decorates as much as it hides, the subject of the loincloth furnishes an occasion for remarks on history, culture, and psychology.
The reasons why it did not attracts any attention of the scholar, though the purpose of the loincloth is to cover the male genitals, it leaves the buttocks bare. Most peoples feel shame about all or part of the genitals; but it seems to be a peculiarly western trait to feel equal shame about the buttocks, probably from a fear of homosexuality, an anxiety which also seems to grow with civilization. Hence, westerners have always considered the loincloth an immodest garment.
The loincloth is a garment of great antiquity, the original men’s clothing of most of the world, and particularly of the Malayo-Polynesian area, which includes the islands of the Pacific Ocean as far east as Hawaii and as far south as New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines, the Malay peninsula, the island of Madagascar to the west, and mainland places inhabited by such Dayak-like peoples as the Mnongs of Vietnam, the Mru of Bangladesh and the Nagas of Assam. On the continent west of India the loincloth is unknown. In Malaya, Java, Bali, and elsewhere, the loincloth was replaced by the skirtlike kain because of Hindu influence,while the sarong (a sewn tube of cloth) is an Islamic