Their
Hair Is Long And Rolled Up On The Top Of Their Heads, And They Go Always
Armed, Carrying Bucklers And Naked Swords.
The Nairs have their wives in
common among themselves, and when any of them goes into the house of one
of these women, he leaves his sword and buckler at the door, and while
he is within no other dare enter the house.
The king's children never
inherit the kingdom after their fathers, lest perchance they may have
been begotten by some other man; wherefore the son of the king's
sisters, or of some female of the royal-blood succeeds, that they may be
sure of having a king of the royal family. Those Naires and their wives
have great holes in their ears by way of ornament, so large and wide as
is hardly credible, holding that the larger these holes are, so much the
more noble are they. I had leave from one of them to measure the
circumference of the hole in one of his ears with a thread; and within
that circumference I put my arm up to the shoulder with my clothes on,
so that in fact they are monstrously large. This is begun when they are
very young, at which time a hole is made in each ear, to which they hang
a piece of gold or a lump of lead, putting a certain leaf into the hole
which causes the hole to increase prodigiously. They load ships at
Cochin both for Portugal and Ormuz:
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