Page 143 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

ENGLISH MISSION TO THE GREAT MOGUL 143

that “ though drunkenness is a common and glorious vice
and an exercise of the King’s, yet it is so strictly forbidden
that no man can enter into the place where the King sits
but the porters smell his breath and if he have but tasted
wine is not suffered to come in, and if the reason be known
of his absence he shall with difficulty escape the whip.”
The story is related of an unfortunate noble who in an
unguarded moment in open durbar made an oblique refer­
ence to the previous night’s wassail and, for his indiscre­
tion, was almost beaten to death with the terrible whips
described by Hawkins.
Cruelty, now as in Hawkins’ time, was a conspicuous
feature of the Emperor’s character. One day Roe and
his associates were horrified at the awful cries of a woman of
the harem who, for some indiscretion, had been condemned
to be buried up to the neck and left to die by exposure to
the fierce rays of the sun. For one whole day and a part
of another the wretched creature’s heart-piercing appeals
for mercy were heard by the Englishmen in their lodgings,
which were in the vicinity of the scene of the terrible
tragedy. They, of course, dare not interfere in the least
degree, as to have done so would probably have been to
seal their own doom as well as that of the victim of Jehan-
gir’s wrath.
In some respects, as Hawkins had noted, the Mogul
government showed considerable enlightenment. One
feature of the system which to-day would be regarded
as counting to some extent for administrative righteous­
ness is, curiously enough, cited by Roe as an example of
imperial waywardness. It was the practice invariably
followed at that period of publishing accounts of the dis­
cussions in durbar upon public questions with the decisions