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In games of power, death by milk and honey
Summary
The past was a breathtakingly violent place, particularly in proximity to power. To play in the high leagues, one had to be prepared for risks
Historically, treason anywhere in the world was often punished with death. But some cultures got rather creative in how they dished out the end.
The ancient Persians, for instance, developed a very sweet method. To start with, the person being eliminated was laid in a boat, while another sealed him from above, leaving only the head exposed. This wooden trap would then be covered with clay, looking on the face of it, like some species of spa treatment. Except that what followed was torture, not therapy. It would begin with the individual being fed all kinds of things, including milk and honey. A lot of the latter was slathered over the head as well. The result was twofold: inside, copious quantities of diarrhoeal waste would collect, inviting rodents and worms, while outside, insects feasted on the convict’s helpless, rotting face. Death took weeks to arrive. And when it did, it was to snatch away not a living human but a putrid, shivering mass of flesh.
Also read: Insults are an instrument of politics—a means to cut rivals down to size
For those engaged in games of power, political violence necessarily had to be spectacular. Order could not be threatened, and if it were, the threat had to be quashed in style. Our own ancestors had prescriptions for this. The Arthasastra, for instance, frowns on challenges to authority. Anyone who foments revolts, attempts to snatch power, or to instigate disaffection is, it tells us, to be burnt alive “from head to foot". This is for non-Brahmins, though; Brahmins were to be drowned. For those disclosing secrets to enemies, meanwhile, the punishment was to be “torn to pieces". Of course, in practice it was possible to switch procedures. As late as the 19th century, a rebel leader in Kerala found his legs tied to elephants, which were thereafter prodded to run in opposite directions. The only reassuring detail about the episode is that the man was brave: asked by his snarky executioner how he was feeling just as the ripping began, he replied that it was like reposing in a velvet bed.
Power was imperilled not just by external enemies but also rivals within. Muhammad bin Tughlaq in 14th century Delhi, for example, had a cousin who challenged his succession. It took a while, but when this kinsman fell into the sultan’s hands, he was reportedly flayed. His flesh was cooked into biryani and sent to his wife and children, with another portion reserved for the imperial elephants. (It is said they rejected the meal—the elephants, that is.)
In 15th century Vijayanagara, similarly, Devaraya II found a relative coveting the throne. The latter had organised a house-warming party, inviting the king and his court. The court attended, and were killed, their screams concealed by loud music. Devaraya himself did not show, however, so his frustrated cousin took a dagger to him. Luckily, the emperor survived; and carrying his would-be successor’s severed head, he mounted a horse and rode up and down the capital. It was a dramatic display of the fate awaiting all who wished the monarch ill.
Violence, though, could also be employed without death, as a signature move to inspire dread. Seventeenth-century armies serving the Wadiyars of Mysore were widely feared, thus, due to a “predilection", as the scholar Caleb Simmons put it, “for nose-cutting". In some accounts, it was during battle that they chopped off noses, leaving their opponents mutilated for life. A 1649 Kannada text, on the other hand, suggests that it was after the enemy was defeated that its troops were lined up for nose-extraction. But the goal was the same: spreading fear of Mysore soldiers. Among Islamic rulers, meanwhile, blinding was popular. Potential claimants for the throne, if they survived contests for succession, were deprived of their eyes—and with this, of any right to the crown. Early in his reign, for instance, the Mughal emperor Jahangir blinded his son for trying to bypass him as king. Among the Bahmani sultans, even a nine-year-old lost his eyes—though not an immediate threat, he had the misfortune of being considered a prospective one.
Then there was violence by surprise and subterfuge. The Akkadian king Rimush was a grand conqueror and all that, until murdered by “killer scribes" in what was, to quote British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, “the first death by bureaucracy" some 4,500 years ago.
Closer to our own time and place, a sultan in Bijapur was murdered by “handsome eunuchs" who had “excited his perverse attention". Where the man—a poet, bibliophile, and warrior—went in hoping for a good time, he ended the night in a bloody puddle. Poison too was deployed. Legend has it that a Gujarati sultan was, from infancy, given micro-doses by mummy to build up immunity and protect against plotters. And in the 1870s, a widowed and pregnant maharani of Baroda found her fruits injected with nefarious substances by a conniving brother-in-law. The man was charged later—unconvincingly though—with seeking to also get rid of a hectoring British official by mixing diamond dust and arsenic into the white man’s sherbet.
Punishment for domestic indiscipline in political settings could also be ugly. In Jahangir’s day, foreigners reported the case of a woman caught in flagrante with a court eunuch—a breach of harem rules. She was buried until the armpits and left to die in the heat, but only after being made to watch her lover’s execution. Sometimes, though, things went awry. In 18th century Ikkeri, a childless royal couple adopted an heir. When the king died, his widowed queen took a slave-lover. As the adoptee resented this, the rani sensed a threat, moving to pre-empt it. The new ruler was put to death either by strangulation during his bath or buried alive by a toilet attendant-cum-assassin. The widow moved on and adopted a second heir. This time, though, she shrewdly kept power with herself. It is a different matter that soon Hyder Ali of Mysore annexed the state. And some say the lady’s life came to an end when she attempted to murder her captor next.
The past, then, was a breathtakingly violent place, particularly in proximity to power. One day you could be living a life of luxury, only to find yourself sewn into animal skin the next, and left to suffocate. You might be a minister, with a track record going back decades, until suddenly you upset your patron and are sentenced to drown with a sack of rocks at your neck. (Or if you lived in Rome, be thrown in a sack yourself, with monkeys and snakes for company as you flail and sink.) In fraught times, if you were unlucky enough to pick the losing side—yet lucky enough to be spared your head—you might still be made to slice off your genitals. But that was precisely it: to play in the high leagues one had to be prepared for risks. And the seductions of power are such that to this day, many enter the game with complete willingness.
Manu S. Pillai is a historian and author, most recently, of False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma.
