Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c55.s4.3

v4.c55.s4.3

"He has been seized with a sordid avarice, which . . . has gone beyond all bounds. This monarch has two qualities which seem hereditary in his house: he is marvellously devout and very much given to women. He passes his life in their midst, having no less than 500 in his seraglio. . . . I have seen him surrounded by *faqirs* and *mullās*. . . These *mullās* leap up, dance, turn on their feet, their arms in the air, with a prodigious rapidity and make a hundred other extravagant acts. . . Sometimes the *mullās* approach his person extending their arms in front of them, their fists pressed one against the other. The Pādishāh rises up, applies his hands to the fists of the *mullās*, and then passes his hands, sanctified by that touch, to his face and to his beard with a seriousness which gives me a great desire to laugh.