Storia do Mogor 60.4.5

60.4.5

Every time that a general won a victory the heads of the villagers were sent as booty to the city of Agrah to be displayed in the royal square before all the people as a proof of their success. After twenty-four hours the heads were removed to the imperial highway, where they were hung from the trees or deposited in holes on pillars built for this purpose. Each pillar could accommodate one hundred heads. Many a time have I seen in the city piles of these villagers' heads. Once I saw ten thousand of them; they could be recognised by their being shaven, with huge moustaches, mostly reddish in colour. In the thirty-four years that I dwelt in this Mogul kingdom I travelled often from Agrah to Dihlī, and every time there was a number of fresh heads on the roadside and many bodies of thieves hanging from the trees, who were punished thus for robbing on the highway. Thus passers-by are forced to hold their noses on account of the odour from the dead, and hasten their steps out of apprehension of the living. The villagers were not able to take vengeance on their first enemy, Akbar, in his lifetime, but how they avenged themselves on his bones after his death I shall tell hereafter (I. 91).