Note note 4 to ch. lxxxii — Chapter LXXIX

Note 4.—These tattooing artists were probably employed mainly by mariners frequenting the port. We do not know if the Malays practised tattooing before their conversion to Islam. But most Indo-Chinese races tattoo, and the Japanese still “have the greater part of the body and limbs scrolled over with bright-blue dragons, and lions, and tigers, and figures of men and women tattooed into their skins with the most artistic and elaborate ornamentation.” (Alcock, I. 191.) Probably the Arab sailors also indulged in the same kind of decoration. It is common among the Arab women now, and Della Valle speaks of it as in his time so much in vogue among both sexes through Egypt, Arabia, and Babylonia, that he had not been able to escape. (I. 395.)