How did bath houses become popular

Bathing and concepts of cleanliness are not universal across societies. Cleanliness, for some, meant multiple times during a day bathing, while for others it may simply have a religious or spiritual significance, even while little bathing took place on a day-to-day schedule. For most of human history, private bath facilities were a rare commodity. Thus, it is the history of bath houses that is associated with social concepts of cleanliness and this was spread by factors that included empires, new religious/spiritual ideas, and other cultural influence.

Early Bath Houses

Perhaps among the earliest societies with bath houses included Indus region societies in the 3rd millennium BCE, who built forms of bath houses and established rituals for bathing. In fact, one the earliest large bathing, and likely public, complexes is found in Mohenjo-daro, where the so-called "Great Bath" is often considered the earliest public bath with the main pool measuring 11.88 × 7.01. Later Indian works, such as the grihya sutras, discuss the importance of bathing and hygiene that emphasized bathing three times a day as a way to keep the body clean. It was also seen as a way to stay spiritually clean, demonstrating that religious concepts of cleanliness sometimes were associated with physical cleanliness.