Storia do Mogor 191.4

191.4

The campaigns against Bijapur began from one thousand six hundred and seventy, and [238] lasted until this year (? 1686). At the commencement of the war, when the men of Bijapur caught any unhappy persons belonging to the Moguls who had gone out to cut grass or collect straw or do some other service, they did not kill them but cut off their noses. Thus they came back into the camp all bleeding. The surgeons belonging to the country cut the skin of the forehead above the eyebrows, and made it fall down over the wounds on the nose. Then, giving it a twist so that the live flesh might meet the other live surface, by healing applications they fashioned for them other imperfect noses. There is left above, between the eyebrows, a small hole, caused by the twist given to the skin to bring the two live surfaces together. In a short time the wounds heal up, some obstacle being placed beneath to allow of respiration. I saw many persons with such noses, and they were not so disfigured as they would have been without any nose at all, but they bore between their eyebrows the mark of the incision.