The Malay’s Chief Garment
No one knows who invented the sarong. When the great Sir Francis Drake
skirted the beautiful jungle-bound shores of that strange Asian peninsula which
seems forever to be pointing a wondering finger into the very heart of the
greatest archipelago in the world, he found its inhabitants wearing the sarong.
After a lapse of three centuries they still wear it,—neither Hindu invasion,
Mohammedan conversion, Chinese immigration, nor European conquest has
ever taken from them their national dress. Civilization has introduced many
articles of clothing; but no matter how many of these are adopted, the Malay,
from his Highness the Sultan of Johore, to the poorest fisherman of a squalid
kampong on the muddy banks of a mangrove-hidden stream, religiously wears
the sarong.
It is only an oblong cloth, this fashion-surviving garb, from two to four feet in
width and some two yards long; sewn together at the ends. It looks like a
gingham bag with the bottom out. The wearer steps into it, and with two or three
ingenious twists tightens it round the waist, thus forming a skirt and, at the same
time, a belt in which he carries the kris, or snake-like dagger, the inevitable
pouch of areca nut for chewing, and the few copper cents that he dares not trust
in his unlocked hut. The man’s skirt falls to his knees, and among the poor class
forms his only article of dress, while the woman’s reaches to her ankles and is
worn in connection with another sarong that is thrown over her head as a veil, so
that when she is abroad and meets one of the opposite sex she can, Moslem-like,
draw it about her face in the form of a long, narrow slit, showing only her coal-
black eyes and thinly pencilled eyebrows.
In style or design the sarong never changes. Like the tartan of the Highlanders,
which it greatly resembles, it is invariably a check of gay colors. They are all
woven of silk or cotton, or of silk and cotton mixed, by the native women, and
no attap-thatched home is complete without its hand-loom.