301–310 of 360 posts
The content of the article was interesting but the writing style was stupid and infantile. You couldn't share this article with a colleague, a parent, or anyone who might not understand the "quirky" writing style filled with references to pop culture memes and expletives. TL;DR immaturely written for no reason.
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 befo…
Still though, searching “who taught Europeans how to bathe” will confidently return you lots of articles like
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, not to take a side here, but it wouldn't, would it? The topics GP listed are (allegedly) 'continuing bad things from past', so why would someone with 'pride in their past' mention them?
Where has this 'pride in their past' narrative come from except for the comment that lists those topics? The comment I appreciated kumarvvr posting makes no proclamations about pride or India or Hinduism, it talks about cleaning practices and traditional herbs almost exclusively.
> The highest ideal in Hinduism is "Sarve jana, sukhino bhavanthu" (All living things should be happy)
> Spiritually, It is special, in the sense that Hinduism is not a religion but a philosophical way of life, that encourages debate, discussion, logical analysis and introspection. Historically, the only gift for questioning ones religion was a beheading in the case of Christianity and Islam.
More generally, "pride in their past" comes across in every comment they posted and the narrative that "disruption from outsiders caused poverty, before then food was plentiful, poverty as described in European middle ages was not present in India":
> In 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 response to someone claiming that there were (like in medieval Europe, the topic of this post) many poor people in India in the same time period:
> Come on, you can't tell me the poor, barely able to feed themselves, lucky to have fuel for cooking food, lucky to get porable water, barely a roof over their heads, had these luxuries?
The user in question replies:
> Yeah, no. Leaving aside a few famines here and there, India was mostly self sufficient and had plentiful of food.
No one said India was not "self-sufficient", we're talking about peasants in those times, having a low quality of life.
The only source the user shared for their assertions, seems to confirm peasants lived in poverty at the time (like anywhere else in the world): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32364750
The Old Norse word for Saturday, laugardagr, literally means "washing day". This custom still survives here in countryside Eastern Europe where many people routinely go to sauna (banya) every Saturday (or Sunday like my family). Before the 20th century, a lot of Eastern Europe (especially Russia) still lived like they lived in the middle ages: 95% of the country were serfs on feudal property living in traditional woo…
But Nordic countries become Christian just in 12th century. And it took considerably longer for actual Christian beliefs to establish themselves among the people in these regions. So all these “don’t bath” nonsense promoted by pope was ignored (like, Pope Innocent IV passed the verdict against Frederick II of being a heathen. The first accusation on his list was the King bathed daily.) In short, people did not wanted…
Which is neither here, nor there, as Christian countries still bathed just fine.
>So all these “don’t bath” nonsense promoted by pope was ignored
They were ignored in Christian countries, include Rome and Byzantium, anyway.
Not to mention, they weren't meant that way anyway. From TFA:
"It’s true that we have medieval sources which warn against “excessive” bathing. But here’s the thing, that wasn’t really about being clean, it was about hanging out naked in bathhouses with the opposite sex. They didn’t want you to not be clean, they wanted you to not be going down the bath house and getting your fuck on. And yeah, some holy people didn’t bathe, notably saints who would forego bathing themselves but bathe sick or poor people. But if you bring that up you are missing the point. Medieval people thought that bathing and being clean was really nice, so giving it up and living with your stank was a sign that you had given up on the corporeal world and only thought of heaven. It was holy because it was uncomfortable, like wearing a hair shirt, or eating vegan, and hitting your chest with rocks and sitting in the desert trying not to wank. You know, standard saint stuff. It is mentioned because it is uncommon and uncomfortable."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This 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 g…
But surely by that definition Europe was also a unified entity in the medieval period.
That is to say, if you decide that a region should be seen as unified (perhaps because of modern political boundaries), one can cherry-pick common elements to try to reach that conclusion. It's not entirely incorrect, but it's a biased way of presenting the evidence in order to justify a preconceived belief.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not saying they manufacture soap and showers, it’s very obvious that they have different ways of bathing. I think most people understood this as self-cleaning, so dust, water, licking, everything.
Bathing requires water. Animals obviously clean themselves but the poster asked about bathing specifically.
Here are some contra points: - Aztecs were burning incense around the conquistadors to hide their unpleasant body odor (documented) - The Christian Church actually said bathing naked was forbidden - the pope instructed all public bath to be closed - The monks order clearly said to bath only once a year - general decline of the cities caused that a lot of public baths to be closed. Rome had none in medieval time. - Mu…
The conquistadors spent months packed on a boat together with pigs and other livestock, then were basically camping out as they traveled. And the Triple Alliance* were extremely clean people, so this might not be the fairest comparison. I smell pretty unpleasant after a single day on a roadtrip, kids can confirm.
* I think this is a more accurate term than Aztec, based on my rereads of 1491.
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You're gonna be disappointed in the rest of the internet and a significant amount of the adults in the world if this language is so foul as to bother you. Completely unnecessary callout. Either way, a skim of some google results looking for other articles on medieval bathing references evidence in the form of obituaries mentioning deaths of peasants while bathing in rivers, as well as the existence of bathhouses in s…
So this is probably just casual misogyny from a usual suspect.
There is a Hindu mythological story in India about how the elephant god ganpati/gajanan/ganesh( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha ) got his elephant head while his body is of a human. The story goes something like this, Shiva/Shankar/Mahesh( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva ) is a god of destruction in Hinduism. When he was out in the forest, his wife Parvati was alone and had to go for a bath. But she was con…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My assumption, when applied to India, would be that it would be an issue for the untouchables caste? afaik untouchables as a concept was mostly enacted around (british) colonial rule (when they instituted the caste system we see even to today), so might not apply to the time period they are talking about... (happy to be corrected on this if i misunderstand)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India Seems like the British systems formed and formalized it, but that that itself was an amalgam of the cultural stratification that was sometimes already there. Multiculturalism turned monstrous... sad.
[1] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/genetic-study-finds-caste-syste...