Travels in India (Tavernier) 57.6

57.6

For, as I have elsewhere remarked, in the houses of the nobles the women’s apartments are in the centre, and it is generally necessary to traverse two or three large courts and a garden or two before reaching them. When these Princesses are married to nobles of the Court they become the rulers of their husbands, who, if they do not live as they desire, and do not act according to their commands, as they possess the power of approaching the King whenever they wish, they persuade him to do what they please, to the disadvantage of their husbands; most frequently asking for them to be deprived of their offices. As it is the custom that the firstborn succeeds to the throne, although he be the son of a slave, immediately that the Princesses of the King’s harem become aware that there is one among them with child, they use all conceivable methods to make her have a miscarriage. When I was at Patna in the year 1666, Shaista Khan’s surgeon, who is a half-caste (mestiv) Portuguese, assured me that the Princess, wife of Shaista Khan, in one month had caused miscarriages to eight women of his harem, not permitting any children but her own to survive.