"At a time when the British showed no particular enthusiasm for cleanliness, Indian women for example introduced British men to the delights of regular bathing. The fact that the word shampoo is derived from the Hindi word for massage, and that it entered the English language at this time, shows the novelty to the eighteenth-century British of the Indian idea of cleaning hair with materials other than soap. Those who returned home and continued to bathe and shampoo themselves on a regular basis found themselves scoffed at by their less hygienic compatriots: indeed it was a clichĂ© of the time that the British in Bengal had become âeffeminateâ. A few Calcutta men were known to have had themselves circumcised to satisfy the hygienicâand presumably religiousârequirements of their Indian wives and companions."
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Travel writersAcademics from ScotlandHistorians from ScotlandArt historiansNon-fiction authors from Scotland
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William Dalrymple - White Mughals
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Dalrymple_(historian)
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William Dalrymple (historian)
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