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Licentious tongues: The court eunuch in European travelogues

The eunuchs of the Mughal court, often referred to as khwajas in colonialist literaturę, are a very different entity from the hijras of the twentieth century, but be-cause many of today s hijras conceptualize themselves as descendants of these ear-lier court eunuchs, freąuently ratthng off folk legends about sharp-tongued eunuch administrators, they merit attention here. The eunuchs’ predilection for abusive language is documented in the literaturę over a span of several centuries, particularly in European travelogues. The Uvely stories narrated by the Italian physician Niccolao Manucci in the mid-1600s about his interactions with various eunuchs during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb provide some rather colorful examples. In his lengthy Storia do Mogor (translated by Irvine 1907), Manucci relates several stories regarding what he calls “that sort of brute” known as the eunuch, describing his greed, his vanity, and, most significant in terms of the present discussion, his “licentious tongue”: