[kumarvvr]

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 before sitting to eat food.
  3. Washing whole body after sex.
  4. Washing legs before entering others homes.
  5. Leaving footwear outside the *gate* of any home before entering it.
  6. A full bath in a river / lake / house tank *before* sunrise and once *before* sunset.

Also, body was supposed to be massaged with oil of sesame seeds (once a week), and greengram flour was rubbed on every part of the body. After sitting in the sun like this for a few minutes, the flour was scrubbed off by hand, and then a hot water bath taken.

For shampoo, two traditional herbs are recommended. Kunkudukai and shikakai. Both are used as it is without any processing. Kunkudukai would be crushed and mixed with water to form a liquid and then applied on head. Amazingly, it would form a lather when rubbed on the head. I remember doing this type of head bath every sunday, until about 2005. Any shampoo was forbidden in our home. The items were dead cheap too.

[Edit]

Kinkudukai is also called soapnut.

https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-soapnuts-for...

The above site tends to exaggerate the benifits a bit, but it is believed that kunkudukai inhibhits dandruff and is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial.

By personal experience, it tastes absolutely vomit inducing bitter and will burn your eyes to high hell if as much as a diluted drop enters it.

Its a natural, safe and environmentally friendly way of taking a head bath.

[danmaz74]

> I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times.

Which western kids did you hear from? Every western kid I know studied that in Roman times bathing was a very important activity; as a matter of fact there were very advanced public baths, thermae (which included "sauna" with hot and cold water) in every city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae

[valtism]

In my experience, a lot of western kids I know believe that bathing was almost non-existent in medieval times.

[eru]

Keep in mind that India was and is a huge and diverse place.

A unified India did not exist until fairly recently. Neither as a political entity nor as a culture one.

[kumarvvr]

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 greatest temples of Hinduism are not concentrated in one place, but spread over the entirety of the continent. And those are ancient temples. From Saraswati Temple in Kashmir to the Bhagavathi temple in Kanya Kumari.

The idea that India was not a cultural entity was a British invention

[origin_path]

But surely by that definition Europe was also a unified entity in the medieval period.

[OJFord]

I was going to say the same thing, but then I realised the initial claim was also about 'cultural unity'. So fair enough, and yes a lot of Europe (or all of it in a few sections) has been culturally unified since time immemorial.

It is a bit more complex though, certainly even today there's some very distinct 'culture' in different regions across India. But also shared themes and roots (e.g. Sanskrit & texts written in it, from which modern 'distinct' languages/beliefs/teachings have been derived) that kumarvr's far better placed to comment on than I am.

[eru]

> [...] has been culturally unified since time immemorial.

Could you be a bit more concrete?

[hnfong]

Not the GP but I'll be more concrete in the other direction.

The Roman Empire is located in Europe, is more recent than "time immemorial", and I'll claim that they didn't regard the various barbarians in Europe outside its sphere of influence as culturally unified with them.

[bnralt]

To go even further: I imagine if the Arab world was politically unified with Europe today, there'd be a lot of people saying that it was always a unified Mediterranean cultural entity, sharing Monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Greek intellectual foundations, and having a long-term shared history in the Roman world. It's not a point of view commonly encountered today, though, probably because Europe and the Arab world aren't politically unified.

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.

[prox]

Yeah, this is also what I gathered from speaking to people from India, and my own research. Brahmanism/ belief in the vedas was pretty widespread and sanskrit is with a few local exceptions the “Latin” of India. As far as I know there was relatively little iconoclasm as most follow up empires usually respected what came before. The exception might by in the deep south? Not sure. Ofcourse this changed somewhat with islamism and British rule. Those two things reformed a lot in the identities of people during time up till now.

[prox]

Speaking to some people from India, and my own readings what combined their society was a couple of things : a deep connection to the traditions such as the vedas, sanskrit, gods, brahmanism. And even if there was divergence, it was usually with a deep respect for what had gone before. So surely while there was a lot of cultural divergence, there was also a lot of things that made it into the India we see today. Some empires also endured a long time to make more of cultural unity. I am not sure in how far Bharat was used for the whole subcontinent and where.

[kumarvvr]

True. There were a multitude of kings, queens and kingdoms across India, but the study and spread of the cultural and literary roots of India happened all across the sub-continent.

That is why, even today, the same chants used in temples in the north, are used in the south. The text, meanings, rituals, practices, etc, may have taken a regional flavor, but the essence is the same, the core is the same and the philosophical idea behind it is the same.

[hef19898]

Map covering the different languages spoken in modern India:

https://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/indianlanguages.htm

[rendall]

> Its funny that western history distorts the history of the rest of the world.

Is it? "Non-western history" more accurately portrays the history of the rest of the world?

[honkdaddy]

There’s a bizarre fantasy I see a lot of self-hating westerners reference which is that their hygiene and bathing practices were learned from other societies, which from what I’ve read from and what this article shows, is clearly a complete fiction.

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.

[samarthr1]

Wasn't Nandi's advice three baths and one meal?

[kumarvvr]

Yeah, but only for monks. Not for householders or the like.

A person who eats 3 meals a day is a rogi (Diseased)

A person who eats 2 meals a day is a bhogi (A content, satisfied person)

A person who eats 1 meal a day is a yogi (A person on the path to spiritual bliss)

[b112]

[flagged]

[kumarvvr]

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 India, Every village was in the vicinity of a water source. Every village had a temple, with a large pond.

Massaging with oil and flour based cleansing was the staple of almost every household.

Oils and Flours were cheap. Most of agricultural products were cheap in India. Portable water was not an issue, because industrialization did not yet happen and most water sources (and hundreds of wells dug around the country) would have clean, drinking water. Did you think a thousand years ago, people used water filters? The only filter that was used was a fine threaded cloth.

Fuel for cooking food, as with any country in those times was usually wood, husk or similar material.

> barely able to feed themselves

Yeah, no. Leaving aside a few famines here and there, India was mostly self sufficient and had plentiful of food.

In fact, selling food was considered the gravest sin. It was codified in societal practices that a householder should try to feed at-least one from outside before he has his food. Food donation was considered the highest ideal, even greater than money.

> barely a roof over their heads.

Most of the population lived in thatched huts or wood beam supported houses constructed from soil based cement like stuff. I assume this was true all over the world.

>You are the peasant. No lands for you, you aren't a lord or lady, you're a peon like 99.999% of people. Almost no middle class, and you aren't upper! You're lower class.

This is just an ignorant thing to say, without having any knowledge of world history, forget about Indian history. Also reeks of extreme contempt.

If you are not aware, this was how most of the world lived. Lower class was the norm. We are now living in an age of disproportionate luxury.

[Frost1x]

>Portable water was not an issue, because industrialization did not yet happen and most water sources (and hundreds of wells dug around the country) would have clean, drinking water. Did you think a thousand years ago, people used water filters?

Potable water hasn't been an issue strictly introduced by industrialization, it was exacerbated by increased population density in areas where water sources were more likely to be contaminated. There are plenty of nasty biological contaminates out there that make water non-potable: various bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc. as well as inorganics like lead leaching that led to bad water sources (not to mention droughts). Potable water has always been an issue (to this day), industrialization agreeably added new issues although it also introduced water processing science to make non-potable waters potable in many places.

We should celebrate modern industrialized water processing, not shun it.

[stavros]

Did they mean potable, or portable? You don't need potable water to wash your feet, but you do need it to be in your house somehow, I guess...

[politelemon]

> 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.

Your statements reek of nationalism and revisionist history, viewing the past through black-and-white-and-rose tinted glasses, and passing blame onto 'evil foreigners' for current problems. It's mind boggling that you think anyone would lap these statements up.

[Vetch]

The original phrasing could be worked on but it's not so far out as you say either.

> passing blame for current problems

Humans think we're special but we're still slightly more complicated networked state machines. This means the issue of metastability, where a pathological state is entered and maintains even with the triggering stimulus removed, due to sustaining effects such as fitness criteria given rampant corruption, is real. Control and dynamical systems theory is as applicable to human systems as it is to traffic networks or distributed systems.

This isn't to say current problems are solely because of past inequities but worth recognizing that once entered into, exiting by solutions which entail solving challenging coordination problems are extremely difficult to obtain.

> black-and-white-and-rose tinted glasses

I know next to nothing about Indian history but what they says sounds plausible even if causality for present is more involved. I have at least heard of the famous Indus Valley Civilization and its emphasis on baths, scientific precocity, exceptional levels of egalitarianism, pacifism and influence on subsequent Indian civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_civilisation#Post...

[BbzzbB]

Disclaimer: I know way too little about history of present-day India, I'm not looking to argue with anyone.

But is what you're linking what GP is talking of? Because this is over 2k years old, while it's interesting it doesn't validate or invalidate living conditions of pre-colonial India. Wouldn't it be like linking to an article on propsperity from peak Roman empire when discussing much more recent feudalist Europe? Roman influence on Europe (and beyond) abound, but some early positive characteristics of it's statehood have been long gone by medieval times. And I thought the thread was on recent(ish) history.

[jvanderbot]

Arguing across an ocean about the validity of anecdotal bathing practices is not the transhumanist future I though ubiquitous internet would provide.

But what did I expect...

[salawat]

I actually find this refreshing, and a reminder of the types of arguments that gave the internet it's original charm.

[halfmatthalfcat]

This is actually the content I come to HN for. You could argue that HN specializes in one-upmanship or pedantry but it's also a breeding ground for a lot of good discussion on incredibly niche topics.

[mensetmanusman]

This is also classic HN. Right above you someone is backing up their argument by proclaiming with gusto that humans are network computers.

[ETH_start]

This is not true. We have reliable indicators of pre-modern poverty levels [1], and they were indeed brutal. India (in the mythical pre-invasion period) was no exception. [2]

>>Most of the population lived in thatched huts or wood beam supported houses constructed from soil based cement like stuff. I assume this was true all over the world.

This is what extreme poverty (pervasive in pre-modern times, aand still present today in the poorest regions of the world) looks like:

"Official reports for Burgundy between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries are full of 'references to people [sleeping] on straw... with no bed or furniture' who were only separated 'from the pigs by a screen'."

- Civilization & Capitalism [3]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

[2] https://theunbrokenwindow.com/Development/MADDISON%20The%20W...

[3] https://archive.org/stream/fernand-braudel-the-structure-of-...

[kumarvvr]

Depends on what you mean by poverty. I mean, how does one even measure it a 1000 years ago.

I am suspicious of these reports.

Every country has a history of good times and bad times. However, the culture of India is unique in the sense that the most strongest unit was the collective society and cultural practices (food donation being held as the highest ideal, practical prohibition of sale of food, a multitude of rituals for householders wherein donation of money, clothes, grain, etc was part of the ritual, societal support for disabled persons, etc). This led to a fairly decent life and times.

Were there not people in extreme poverty, sure. Was the whole country in poverty, surely not.

[formerkrogemp]

> Depends on what you mean by poverty. I mean, how does one even measure it a 1000 years ago.

It's called anthropology, linguistics, geology, and history. They're legitimate fields with highly qualified and knowledgeable professionals. Through their efforts we have a decent idea of what various cultures and lives were like even a thousand years ago through carbon dating, archaeological digs, artefacts, and so forth.

[cyber_kinetist]

I see some anthropologists themselves quarrelling over the definition of 'poverty' though. Yes they are much knowledgeable than us, but you shouldn't think of them having a straightforward 'answer' like what you usually have for math problems.

So if you are bringing academic authorities to the question, at least namedrop some academics/books/papers, so people can have a constructive debate about this.

[ETH_start]

We can see in markers of extreme poverty in remains of people who died in pre-modern times:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_bioarchaeology#

>>Anne L. Grauer, Professor of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago, assessed the presence of porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions in the population (n=1,014) from St. Helen-on-the-Walls in York, England. She used porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions to examine health and disease in urban medieval England. Grauer discovered that 58% of the population displayed evidence of porotic hyperostosis and 21.5% displayed evidence of periosteal reactions.[6]

Without industrial civilization, the amount of labor people do is not sufficient for most of the comforts of modern life, like insulated and waterproof shelter, sanitary pads, diapers, vaccines, bandages, regular laundrying of clothing, etc etc.

[swatcoder]

This would be more useful with detail on what share of the population lived in urban environments, as well as insight into what life was life for the share that didn’t.

Do you know that? Do you have that?

[ch4s3]

There have been plenty of collectivist societies in history and some had gift economies, this isn’t really unique. There are several Native American cultures that would have fit the same description. You could even see a faint parallel in cross-tribal clan membership.

[bryanrasmussen]

>In ancient times, right until the attacks by Islamist marauders and "civilized" Britishers, none of what you have mentioned were an issue.

My assumption, when applied to India, would be that it would be an issue for the untouchables caste?

>If you are not aware, this was how most of the world lived. Lower class was the norm. We are now living in an age of disproportionate luxury.

Even so it still seems unlikely that every member of the society would be able to enjoy these amenities, the question really becomes at which cutoff point is one too poor to do so, and how much of the society was that poor?

[andrekandre]

  > 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)

[unmole]

> 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...

This is revisionist nonsense. Ancient texts, both sacred and secular both describe a extant caste system.

[msravi]

Um, no, they don't. They describe a jaati system, and a varna system, both of which do not take the same meaning as caste. The british conflated the two, and invented caste.

The jaati system was a system of hereditary professional guilds - so you'd have different jaatis for accountants (Kulkarnis for example), farmers (Vokkaligas), teachers (Upaadhyayas), etc. The professional skill was jealously guarded and generally not open to outsiders.

And then you had the varna system which literally means category. This categorized people into 4 categories - Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras based on their nature and actions, NOT profession. This was not hereditary.

The british had zero idea of this, conflated jaati and varna into "caste" and made it rigid by bringing out voluminous reports that classified each jaati into a varna!

[monetus]

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.

[rendall]

> Seems like the British systems formed and formalized it

Here is an extremely harsh critique of that perspective, from an upper-caste scholar of Indian history

https://thewire.in/caste/caste-history-postcolonial-studies

[ch4s3]

There have been a number of genetic studies[1] that can identify caste heredity going back to almost the time of the Vedas showing VERY little genetic mixing between the castes.

[1] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/genetic-study-finds-caste-syste...

[bryanrasmussen]

I've heard this before, but always found it doubtful, conquerors tend to enact systems that mimic those in their home countries.

[zeroonetwothree]

Do you have a source for this? I’d be surprised if we know this much detail and accuracy about how peasants lived hundreds of years ago.

[kumarvvr]

https://indianculture.gov.in/ebooks/daily-life-ancient-india...

A book by a westerner.

[kortilla]

It’s shocking how incongruent your views are with the text from the book (see sibling comment). Do you just selectively choose which parts of the book to believe or do you not believe peasants were any substantial part of the population and are therefore not worth caring about?

[nwiswell]

Very good. Page 68:

> In ancient times, distinction was made between several different categories of farmers. There were those who cultivated their own land, those who had it cultivated by wage-earning laborers, and those who leased their land to 'metayers', farmers who paid rent in kind, in this case half the harvest and crop. There were few big landlords, and the largest estates nearly all belonged to the king, that is to say, the State in fact. The temples, too, recieved vast properties as gifts and had them developed by hired labourers and staff. But these were exceptions, and most of the land was parcelled out in small lots, sometimes only big enough to feed a single family. Many small farmers, however, chose to work the land on a 'united family' basis, under the direction of a head of the family, pooling fields, cattle, agricultural implements, harvests, crops, and grazing-grounds. Under this system, they avoided fragmentation of the family property, and to some extent, they guarded against risks and responsibilities.

> Theirs was not an easy life. The vagaries of the climate often brought seasonal catastrophe: tornadoes devastated the fields, drought scorched the land, floods wiped out whole crops. Apart from these natural hazards, there was the problem of the laws of hospitality, which were rigorously applicable and cost the farmers dearly; the most onerous of these obligations involved the provision of food and fodder for the king and his suite during the course of their cross-country tours of inspection. On such occasions, the absolute right of the king and his dignitaries to provision and stores from the local peasants might well reduce these communities to penury during a bad year, with no hope of replenishing their empty granaries before the following harvest.

> To natural calamities and unavoidable obligations had to be added the burden of taxation. Taxes were numerous and were applied to collective enterprises as well as to individuals. The peasant had to pay not only a basic tax amounting to twenty-five or thirty per cent of the produce of his land at the moment when it was in full yield, but also a periodical (probably annual) contribution based on his income. He had to pay his share of the general tax levied by the State on his village, as well as special taxes that were set against the services rendered by the State to the rural population -- protection against theft in pasturages and fields, the cost of land-surveying, irrigation works, the upkeep and repair of canals. Fruit, herbage, honey and wood were all taxable. If the farmer was not the owner of the land he worked, he was liable to pay rentals or other concessionary fees in addition to the obligatory payment of communal dues and tolls. Under some reigns, tax and duty rates reached such heights that quite often villages would be abandoned by their entire peasant population, who preferred to risk bringing new land under cultivation in some other region rather than submit to such exorbitant demands.

Lest we think these ancient peasants ever actually had it good before the foreigners showed up.

And regarding your assertions about how plentiful water was before industrialization, Page 63-64:

> We are told that, in ancient times, these canals were kept full either 'by hand', that is with the aid of water-skins or a balance-pole (tula), or else by transporting water on the backs of animals, or by using a bucket-chain. An ingenious system, still used in present times, was worked by oxen climbing up a gently sloping artificial ridge and descending it time after time, in so doing hauling up from a well on each occasion a leather bucket filled with water which was emptied into a supply-canal. The canals were excavated communally and served sometimes as demarcation lines between two neighbouring properties. It seems that the use of this commonly owned water often gave rise to keen disputes, and that it was not uncommon for the course to be diverted in the direction of one village's fields at the expense of another's. In such a case, violent quarrels resulted which developed occasionally into pitched battles between rival villagers, and the disagreement had to be brought before the local council for adjudication.

Finally, a portrait of village life, Page 126:

> Village houses were lower and more modest than town ones; their outer walls were covered with a mixture of lime, earth and cow-dung, the last being considered a purifcative agent. The shops were more like street-stalls, and the crowd that passed by their displays were of more humble stock: farmers returning from the fields, pushing ahead of them a small flock of skinny sheep; ragged foragers, grey with chaff, a sickle stuck through their belt, carrying home trusses of hay tied around their hips; women balancing on their heads large bundles of forage rolled inside a mat, to be used as animal fodder; porters trotting along, laden with baskets suspended from each end of a pole carried across the shoulders. Then there were artisans in the process of delivering their merchandise, pedlars transporting their gimcrackery in a bag, strolling players looking for a suitable place to present their turns. Cattle mingled freely with the human throng. Heavy wagons drawn by bullocks (gramasakaia or go-ratha) rolled along the main streets; these were (as they still are today) massive wooden constructions built by the village carpenter, who followed time-honoured traditions in the matter of design. The body was relatively shallow, balanced on two large, heavy, creaking wheels with protruding hubs. A shaft with a yoke at its end was designed to harness a pair of hump-backed bullocks, the yoke resting on their necks between the nape and the dorsal hump; long wooden pegs, carefully carved and painted, were stuck through the yoke, one on each side of the beast's neck, enclosing it, with the additional means of a halter. In addition, their nostrils were pierced and a cord was passed through them, this being intended as a check on their fiery temperament. Their tails were carefully tied flat against their flanks, so that the swishing would not annoy the driver. The latter, squatting at the front of the wagon, his feet on the shaft, guided the team with the aid of a simple whip consisting of a stick and a plaited cord. These vehicles were surmounted by hooped ribs covered by matting, and were used particularly for transporting grain at harvest time; the peasant's entire family, out in the fields, sought respite from the hot sun by sitting under its awning.

> Apart from local and seasonal feast days (see pp. 144-8), rural existence offered only very rare distractions, and each day heralded the same repetitive rhythm of the farmer's routine. While the men worked in the fields, the housewives went about their daily chores and artisans followed their particular craft. Peace did not invariably reign between villagers, or even between villages, and Buddhist tales often mention the sometimes hilarious and bawdy quarrels which provided the only relief from the monotony of daily life.

[bandrami]

Even this book (which frankly has some Hindutva BS in it) is saying "India" but means "The Ganges valley". The hyperspecific layers of types of farmer by tenancy just wasn't found in the Deccan.

[kumarvvr]

> Lest we think these ancient peasants ever actually had it good before the foreigners showed up

They sure as hell had it much worse after the invaders, looters and religious fanatics wreaked havoc in the region for 1000 years.

[justanorherhack]

If it was a cultural value to feed people outside of the home before yourself and food donation was a cultural promoted ideology then that means there were lots of people to feed..

[smogcutter]

Yup, afaik these kinds of horizontal gifting relationships were about a) surplus being essentially impossible to store or accumulate as capital so you might as well give it away, and b) modest insurance against bad times - what goes around comes around.

[southerntofu]

How do you reach this conclusion? I know many people in France who have difficulty feeding themselves / their family, yet depending on the region it may or may not be part of local culture to feed other people outside your home.

In fact, it's definitely not local culture in any big city i've visited, and on the countryside it varies not by region but from one village to the next. From what i could see it it's really not correlated with local productivity.

[greenpeas]

If food was plentiful and everyone had access to food, sharing food would not be a virtue. It's only a virtue if it's somewhat difficult for the person sharing (it means they are sacrificing something to help others) and at the same time is valuable to the receiver (the receiver really needs the food).

[southerntofu]

That makes sense, thanks!

[kumarvvr]

I wouldn't characterize it as that. Population was low enough, compared to food production.

Feeding people is a cultural norm in India, rooted in the scriptures that ones hunger should not be a cause for doing business.

The highest ideal in Hinduism is "Sarve jana, sukhino bhavanthu" (All living things should be happy)

The reverse logic in your statement is also pertinent, in that if there was a lot of feeding going on, then there was a lot of food available.

Indian norms and culture emphasizes on moving away from materialism and advocates for distribution of wealth. Greed is frowned upon and actively discouraged in a society. Wealthy are encouraged to perform rituals and festivals and distribute their wealth.

India is the only civilization in the world where there are written references to kings of large sections of the country, leaving aside all their pomp and glory and going off into forests for meditation and penance. Mind you, they were not failures or banished. They voluntarily gave up their luxuries in search of the ultimate meaning of life.

Indian civilization is a complex layered society where philosophy of life is seeped permanently in daily language, customs, cultures, practices, rituals and history.

That the ultimate goal of life is not wealth, but of discovering the true nature of ourselves, the true nature of this world, the illusion that it is, is emphasized in every aspect of life.

Take the example of the word "punyatma". It is an adjective used for someone who is pious and does good deeds. Similar to "Good samaritan". However, the word is a combination of two words "Punya" (Fruits of good deeds) and "Aatma" (Soul). The implication, and our philosophical belief is that the soul is eternal and is bound to re-births. And the fruits of our actions are tied to our soul, and that there is no escape from getting the results of your actions (good or bad alike).

[kortilla]

> Indian norms and culture emphasizes on moving away from materialism and advocates for distribution of wealth. Greed is frowned upon and actively discouraged in a society. Wealthy are encouraged to perform rituals and festivals and distribute their wealth.

This is also a bog standard description of Christianity and a bunch of other religions. There isn’t anything special about India here.

> India is the only civilization in the world where there are written references to kings of large sections of the country, leaving aside all their pomp and glory and going off into forests for meditation and penance. Mind you, they were not failures or banished. They voluntarily gave up their luxuries in search of the ultimate meaning of life.

Bullshit. Just the history of England and France alone are packed full of wealthy and privileged people focusing their life on the pursuit of enlightenment (spiritual, artistic, and/or scientific) and giving up pre-arranged lives of power and wealth.

> That the ultimate goal of life is not wealth, but of discovering the true nature of ourselves, the true nature of this world, the illusion that it is, is emphasized in every aspect of life.

Again, this is standard guidance you’ll find in all of the major religions. One of the most common criticisms of materialists in America is how they are not following Christianity. Wealth and the eye of a needle, etc.

India was not special. It was just as poor as any other pre-industrialized nation. You’re just looking back on it with rose colored glasses because we haven’t internalized the misery of dying from simple infections, dysentery, famines from floods, etc.

[kumarvvr]

> This is also a bog standard description of Christianity and a bunch of other religions.

I never said India is special in this regard.

>Bullshit. Just the history of England and France alone are packed full of wealthy and privileged people focusing their life on the pursuit of enlightenment (spiritual, artistic, and/or scientific) and giving up pre-arranged lives of power and wealth.

Name 2 kings or monarchs who did this voluntarily.

>Again, this is standard guidance you’ll find in all of the major religions.

Where does it say in Christianity or Islam that this world is an illusion, that there is one god, that all paths lead to the same god, or that the soul inside you is the very same god you pray to ?

>India was not special.

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.

Christians roam around the world converting people. Its so annoying. I never understand this obsession of "my god is the only path, your god is false, and if you don't follow my god and don't accept my god, you will go to hell and are not even fit to be considered a human being". Christianity has lost its soul. The history of the church is the history of Christianity and how low it has fallen from the true path of Christ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramakrishna

[dTal]

>Food donation was considered the highest ideal, even greater than money

That doesn't sound like the kind of norm that would develop in a society where nobody has to worry about getting enough to eat.

[firecall]

Thankyou! Great responses! :-)

[swatcoder]

I don’t think you’re aware of how much any capable person can procure for themselves and their peers, throughout almost all of global history.

Peasants may not maintain secure access to everything, but historically it doesn’t take wealth to have a sturdy shelter, water, warmth, and food, and even some luxuries. It’s a little different in modern times, but those basics were mostly available to everyone just through labor and time, of which peasants have quite a lot.

[badpun]

Besides everything else, you also need to not be taxed into oblivion. Which wasn’t a rare practice in premodern times.

[pvtAc7]

Marco Polo writes(though south india)

Everyone, male and female, washes their whole body twice every day; and those who do not wash are looked down on

Dark skin is highly esteemed among these people. ‘When a child is born they anoint him once a week with oil of sesame, and this makes him grow much darker’

[samarthr1]

Sesame oil is the most commonly used oil in traditional cooking. It likely was a staple.

A family of four needs about half a days with of cooking oil to have a bath with oil.

[sokoloff]

Could you put some mL estimates on those two measures? It would seem to me that I'd need 50x as much oil to bathe in than I'd need to cook for a half a day, making me think I'm clearly thinking about either the bathing or the cooking quite a bit wrongly.

[mplanchard]

I’d imagine this is talking about more of a sponge bath situation than an immersion situation.

[OJFord]

Sesame oil & gram flour are fancy specialist relatively expensive ingredients here (gram flour a bit less so) - but they're grown in India, much more readily available, cheap, and (as another result) used more.

Hot water - I assume we're talking about a time period where it would've been heated over fire anywhere in the world.

[jogjayr]

Yeah the oil and hot water sounds crazy over-the-top. But India is a tropical country that's mostly warm year-round. Everyone probably took a dip in a nearby river, lake, or pond every day. Or took a bucket bath with well water, which would have been perfectly warm enough. This isn't possible, or at least far more uncomfortable, in most European countries due to their climate. Plus you sweat way more in the tropics, so daily bathing is an absolute necessity to feel human.

[aetherson]

While the large majority of people were peasants, the ratio obviously wasn't 99,999:1.

[escape_goat]

Wow, you went right ahead and did the thing.

[malx0x]

By personal experience, it's a shame those customs didn't continue.

[dang]

We've banned this account. Creating accounts to break the site guidelines will eventually get your main account banned too, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ralusek]

Indians definitely still have certain specific hygiene practices that Westerners don't. Anybody who has worked at a large tech company will have taken note of the tooth brushes in the bathrooms. I found this to be very confusing at first, but then I noticed that a good amount of my Indian coworkers would brush their teeth after lunch.

[dartharva]

That is not something unique to India, nor is it a general practice here. You observed some isolated cases.

[zeroonetwothree]

I don’t think this is an Indian thing, western dentists recommend brushing teeth after each meal.

[tremon]

Curiously enough, mine doesn't. In fact, he explicitly recommends against it, since the tooth enamel is weakened by food and saliva, and brushing immediately after a meal scrapes off the weakened enamel.

Instead, he says it's best to wait half an hour between the meal and brushing the teeth.

[LtWorf]

But people just keep their brush in their own desk :D

[OJFord]

This Britisher brushes his teeth after lunch too, on the advice of his Polish dentist. (And not because they were in poor health or anything, just as a matter of policy, where did 2x daily come from, 3x is better, especially if you're eating 3x.)

(Now, even if I don't eat breakfast or lunch, which is quite typical, certainly not both, they'll start to feel unclean and I'll brush them before eating or drinking in the evening.)

[frostwarrior]

Wait, you people don't brush your teeth after lunch?

[honkdaddy]

Wait, you people bring a toothbrush and roll of toothpaste around with you everywhere? Do you only ever eat at your house or office?

[pmontra]

I'm a westerner and of course I brush my teeths after having had food. Why should I brush them if they are clean?

[NeoTar]

Interpreting “after having food” as immediately after eating (which may be unfair to you!) then the American Dental Association disagree with you:

> Brushing Right After Eating

> If you feel the need to clean your teeth after eating or drinking, wait at least 60 minutes before brushing—especially if you have had something acidic like lemons, grapefruit or soda. Drink water or chew sugarless gum with the ADA Seal of Acceptance to help clean your mouth while you are waiting to brush.

https://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/brushing-mistakes-slideshow

[watwut]

I have seen non Indians do it.