The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.150

v1.c10.150

**Beard :** The turbaned figures are all bearded, while those of men of rank and position are all smooth-chinned. In fact, the practice of cultivating the beard has never been in fashion among the ancient Hindus, and even among the earliest Aryans of the Vedic times, the razor⁸⁸ and the barber were in every day requisition. It is true that certain days of the week, particularly Saturdays, and certain constellations are reckoned inauspicious ; but this is overridden by the ordinance which requires that all vows, fasts, and *śrāddhas*, should be preceded by shaving and paring of the nails, the penalty for the wretch, who neglects it "being a sojourn in the next life for twenty days or twenty years in a vat full of hair and nails, during which he has to eat nails and hair, and be constantly beaten with a stick".⁸⁹ The ordinary practice of house-holders is to shave frequently, not unoften every day. In this peculiarity the Hindus closely resemble the ancient Egyptians, who, says Herodotus, only let the hair of their head and beard grow in mourning, being at all other times shaved". "So particular, indeed, were they on this point, that to have neglected it, was a subject of reproach and ridicule; and whenever they intended to convey the idea of a man of low condition, or a slovenly person, the artist represented him with a beard. It is amusing to find", adds Sir Gardener Wilkinson, "that their love for caricature was not confined to the lower orders, but extended even to the king: and the negligent habits of Rameses VII. are indicated in his tomb at Thebes, by the appearance of his chin blackened by unshaven beard of two or three days' growth”.⁹⁰ The ancient Greeks and the Romans entirely differed from the Hindus and the Egyptians in this particular. The Romans cultivated the beard until the year 299 B. C. when P. Ticinus Mena, having brought barbers from Sicily, introduced the custom of shaving at Rome, and, as Pliny states, “Scipio Africanus was the first Roman who shaved every day”. ⁹¹ The Greeks down to the time of Alexander the Great, failed to appreciate the comfort and cleanliness of a shaved chin, and on that account were held in such abhorrence by the Egyptians, who followed the cleanly Indian custom of shaving, that, according to Herodotus, “no Egyptians of either sex would on any account kiss the lips of a Greek, make use of his knife, his spit and cauldron, or taste the meat of an animal which had been slaughtered by his hand”. ⁹² Among Indians, sages, hermits and men who had renounced the pleasures of the world, as also men in mourning, kept it as a mark of penance like the Egyptians⁹³ and the Jews,⁹⁴ and unlike the Greeks, who shaved on those occasions. The bearded Hussar officer, who is so irresistible among the lasses in Europe, would have found scant chance among the damsels of India, who seem to have detested the beard, and to account for the blindness of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, a story is told in the *Mahābhārata*, in which a lady closes her eyes at the sight of her brother-in-law in a beard.