Travels in India (Tavernier) 24.2.4

24.2.4

These women have so much suppleness and are so agile that when the King who reigns at present wished to visit Masulipatam, nine of them very cleverly represented the form of an elephant, four making the four feet, four others the body, and one the trunk, and the King, mounted above on a kind of throne, in that way made his entry into the town. All the people of Golconda, both men and women, are well proportioned, of good stature, and of fair countenances, and it is only the peasantry who are somewhat dark in complexion. The King of Golconda who reigns at present is called Abdul Kutab Shah, and I will inform the reader, in a few words, whence he derives his origin. Under the rule of Akbar, King of India, father of Jahangir, the Moguls only extended their authority southwards to Narbeder, and the river which passes it and, coming from the south, flows into the Ganges, separated their lands from those of the Raja of Narsingha, which extended to Cape Comorin, the other Rajas being, as it were, his subjects, and deriving their power from him. It is this Raja and his predecessors who have always been at war with those who succeeded Tamerlane in India, and they were so powerful that the last Raja who was at war with Akbar had on foot four armies, commanded by as many generals.