travelling couches of the princesses, the gorgeous litters hung between two camels or elephants, or the high, howdahs loaded with eight women, and covered with rich silks and embroidery.
'I cannot avoid dwelling on this pompous procession of the Seraglio,' wrote Bernier. 'Stretch imagination to its utmost limits, and you can imagine no exhibition more grand and imposing than when Raushan-Árá Begam, mounted on a stupendous Pegu elephant, and seated in a meghdambhâr blazing with gold and azure, is followed by five or six elephants with meghdambhârs nearly as resplendent her own, and filled with ladies attached to her household, [and succeeded by the most distinguished ladies of the Court] until fifteen or sixteen females of quality pass with a grandeur of appearance, equipage and retinue, more or less proportionate to their rank, pay, and office. There is something very impressive of state and royalty in the march of these sixty or more elephants; in their solemn and an it were measured steps, in the splendour of the meghdambhârs, and the brilliant and innumerable followers in attendance: and if I had not regarded this display of magnificence with a sort of philosophical indifference, I should have been apt to be carried away by such flights of imagination as inspire most of the Indian poets, when they represent the elephants as conveying so many goddesses concealed from the vulgar gaze[1].'
Bernier was fortunate in seeing so much of the procession, for it was as much as a man's life was worth to be found too near the Seraglio, and once the French doctor had to fight his way through the eunuchs, sword in hand, to escape a merciless beating.
- ↑ Bernier, pp. 372-3.
