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FARANJI.
Yashmak, faranji (arabic Faranjiiya – outer loose clothes) was in past times used by Tajik females to be dressed outside their houses (mainly in towns and cities). It has long false arms tightened together on the back. It covers the head and the whole body of a woman. Comparatively not long ago Tajik women hid their faces by a black net made of hair, the so called chachvan (persian chashm band – the band for eyes). Muslim religion that requires maximum hiding of women’s faces and bodies supported and still supports the tradition to wear yashmak.
It should be noted that women’s cover like faranji was initially one of the elements of a bride’s dress for whom marriage meant the first step out of parents’ house. The everyday vocabulary of Tajiks has such phrase as duhtari hona (means “domestic girl”); to some extent it coincides with Russian “marriageable girl”. The meaning of the phrase “duhtari hona” is that the girl was not allowed to leave the parent’s house with no exigency, and to her future husband’s house she went covered with faranji and the net before her eyes as well as nowadays. Thus, faranji becomes the element of a holiday women’s dress that is primarily used as bride’s dress.
Speaking about rationalistic meaning of wearing such cover it should be noted that being a companion of history of ancient centers of Central Asian civilization this element was the symbol of sexual strictness (marital fidelity) motivated by beliefs and ideas. It embodied women’s modesty, purity, virtue and innocence.
Following practical functions of faranji we should tell about a peculiar underlining. It was the indicator of adaptation of this clothes to climate conditions of Central Asia. Thanks to its underlining faranji protected not only against cold during winter but also against wind for hot and often sweaty body of a woman with a baby during summer. Thus, we can see that elements of the cover that we are interested in were determined by climatic and natural conditions of the region. Faranji, unlike the closed female covers, for example in Afghanistan, was not pulled through the head, but due to its the dressing gown-like form it was thrown on the head. This was convenient for feeding mother when she left the house with a baby in her arms. The chishmband net, located from the head to the breast, allowed a woman to feed her baby, not showing her breast before possible strangers.
This very facial net, which complemented to faranji, significantly contributed to the specific protection of mother and child against infectious diseases, which caused deaths of people during the epidemics. Sucklings, being under the maternal cover with the facial net, were protected against all possible sources of stress. From this viewpoint, female cover, in particular chishmband, provided babies with necessary comfort.
Idea about the woman as a creature who needs protection related, in particular, to
a pregnant woman. Society took care of her, prescribing the carrying of faranji for her as the guarding measure against the imaginary dark forces. Tajiks believed that the impact of these forces, for example, on a pregnant woman, can also damages her fetus. This, among other things, explains why local women hid their faces with nets only before the climax.
After this, women leaving their house under the cover, removed facial net thus walking in the street with open face. Popular beliefs and ideas regarding the need for wearing faranji help to open its specific symbolic functions. Certainly many of these popular beliefs are now lost; thus it is required to reveal them by analyzing the still existing measures. As was already mentioned, in Central Asia faranji was mainly worn mainly in towns and cities. In rural areas there was no need in faranji because most of the population were acquainted or related to each other (life of women was locked in the limits of the community). City, on the contrary, is the space of “strangers”. Thus going out to the street, in accordance with the ancient custom of avoidance, women put on the cover which hid their figure and it possible for them to be not recognized.
Thus the subject of rational and irrational functions with which faranji associated leads us to such element as facial net (or curtain) - chishmband. This word originated from Tajik-Persian noun chishm (liter. chashm – i.e. eye) and the base of the present tense of the verb bastan (band) that means to “close”, “band”, “tie”, “limit”. These meanings of the analyzed word lead us to the supposition that in this case we speak about a curtain being not the mean of hiding woman’s face from men, as it is often interpreted in the scientific literature, but being the mean for protecting women against imaginable negative impacts (evil eye - chishm) which can pose damage to females being the weak
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