Photo 1040(60)

Genre: Ethnographical Photography

Full-length portrait of a seated woman. Reproduced in W.S.A. Lockhart and R.G. Woodthorpe, 'The Gilgit Mission, 1885-86' (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1889), facing p. 318. The photograph shows the characteristic headdress of married Bashgal women: 'Here, for the first time, Bashgal women were seen in their own country by any European, and the novel experience was not pleasing. They had hard, forbidding faces, and were very dirty. Their only dress was a long goat's-hair gown, reaching from the neck to below the knee, and they, like the men, wore ankle boots of soft brown leather. The married women wore a head-dress, but only out of doors. Their head-dress is peculiar to the Bashgal Kafirs. It consists of a cap of goat's-hair cloth tied on to the head behind the ears, from which spring four horns of wood covered with human hair and wool. The front horns stand up to the height of about 8 inches, sloped outwards like those of an antelope, whilst the rear horns curve downwards towards the neck. Between the two front horns there are usually brass ornaments in a bunch; very often English thimbles are used for this. This peculiar head-dress is laid aside indoors...'

[Albumen print, 152x201mm].

Subjects = ethnic groups