On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c23.s10.5

v2.c23.s10.5

The wearing of the conical wooden head-dress by the married women in Himatala as described by our pilgrim was a very peculiar custom. Among the Ye-t'a, supposed to have been of Yue-ti (Getæ) stock, and inhabitants of this region, the married women, we are told, wore a horn head-dress, but with them the number of knobs or horns indicated the numbers of their brothers-in-law who were also their husbands.¹ So also in the *Hua* (滑) country the married women wore on the head a carved wooden horn six inches high and adorned with gold and silver.² Among the Tartars the wives had a head-dress of a peculiar kind, apparently not very unlike those just mentioned.³ William of Rubruck tells us that the Tartar married women "have a head-dress, which they call *bocca*, made of bark, or such other light material as they can find, and it is big and as much as two hands can span around, and is a cubit and more high, and square like the capital of a column."⁴