Travels in India (Tavernier) 14.2.7

14.2.7

Their hair was bound in a tress about their heads, and made a kind of turban. They were all well armed, the majority with bows and arrows, some with muskets, and the remainder with short pikes, and a kind of weapon which we have not got in Europe. It is a sharp iron, made like the border of a plate which has no centre, and they pass eight or ten over the head, carrying them on the neck like a ruff. They withdraw these circles as they require to use them, and when they throw them with force at a man, as we make a plate to fly, they almost cut him in two. Each of them had also a sort of hunting horn, which he sounds, and makes a great noise with when he arrives anywhere, and also when he departs, and also a rake, or instrument of iron, made something like a trowel. It is with this instrument, which the Indians generally carry in their journeys, that they rake and level the places where they wish to halt, and some, having collected the dust in a heap, make use of it as a mattress and bolster in order to lie more comfortably. There were three of these Dervishes armed with long rapiers, which they had received, apparently, from some Englishman or Portuguese. Their baggage consisted of four boxes full of Arabian and Persian books and some cooking utensils, and they had ten or twelve oxen to carry those among the troop who were invalids.