c. 1422.—"The blacks of this country have the body nearly naked; they wear only bandages round the middle called lankoutah, which descend from the navel to above the knee."—Abdurrazzāk, in India in XV. Cent. 17.
1526.—"Their peasants and the lower classes all go about naked. They tie on a thing which they call a langoti, which is a piece of clout that hangs down two spans from the navel, as a cover to their nakedness. Below this pendant modesty-clout is another slip of cloth, one end of which they fasten before to a string that ties on the langoti, and then passing the slip of cloth between the two legs, bring it up and fix it to the string of the langoti behind."—Baber, 333.
c. 1609.—"Leur capitaine auoit fort bonne façon, encore qu'il fust tout nud et luy seul auoit vn langoutin, qui est vne petite pièce de coton peinte."—Mocquet, 77.
1653.—"Langouti est une pièce de linge dont les Indou se seruent à cacher les parties naturelles."—De la Boullaye-le-Gouz, ed. 1657, p. 547.
[1822.—"The boatmen go nearly naked, seldom wearing more than a langutty...."—Wallace, Fifteen Years in India, 410.]
1869.—"Son costume se compose, comme celui de tous les Cambodgiens, d'une veste courte et d'un langouti."—Rev. des Deux Mondes, lxxix. 854.
"They wear nothing but the langoty, which is a string round the loins, and a piece of cloth about a hand's breadth fastened to it in front."—(Ref. lost), p. 26.
LUNKA, n.p. Skt. Lañka. The oldest name of Ceylon in the literature both of Buddhism and Brahmanism. Also 'an island' in general.
——, s. A kind of strong cheroot much prized in the Madras Presidency, and so called from being made of tobacco grown in the 'islands' (the local term for which is lañka) of the Godavery Delta.