The Loincloth of Borneo.
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THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL |
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Title :
The Loincloth of Borneo. |
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Author :
Otto Steinmayer |
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Abstract:
Otto Steinmayer (Universiti Malaya) “...but then, they do not wear breeches.” Michel de Montaigne, Of cannibals. Many may think that - like the loincloth itself - 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 ofthe loincloth furnishes an occasion for remarks on history, culture, and psychology. Despite being among the most basic markers of cultural identity, the loincloth has been distinctly ignored. Anthropologists generally give a word or two regarding it, then pass on to other matters, and writers on costume ignore the topic altogether. When I came to study Borneo, I tried to find a description of what the Borneo loincloth was and how to wear it. For as the Dutchman Karl Martin said of the Sulawesi loincloth a hundred years ago, “once on it’s hard to figure out how it got that way.”1 Many Dayaks who have grown up in modem city life,or even farther out, are as much at a loss for the method of putting on a loincloth as any western man. Much as the western man now finds it difficult to tie a bow tie! There are several reasons why western writers would not want to write much about the loincloth. In the first place, mere unfamiliarity.2 European men’s dress is an “arctic” style based on trousers and the shirt, which they inherited from the Romans. According to archaeological evidence,3 European men have been wearing trousers from the remotest past,even when they too were “primitive.” With negligible exceptions,4 they have never worn any kind of loincloth. The only thing in Europe which resembles it is underpants,a garment that has a history of scarcelya thousand years and whose dignity and consequent esthetic value has been nil.
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| DOI: XXXX |
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How to cite:
Otto Steinmayer. (1991). The Loincloth of Borneo. The Sarawak Museum Journal, XLII (63): 43-62 |
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References
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