EUNUCH.
Eunuque, . . . . FR. Eunuco, SP Verschnittene, . GER. Khadirn, . . . TURK. Khajah, Kboja, . HIND.
Eunuchs are employed in the households of the Mahomedans and Hindus of Egypt, Persia, Arabia, India, and China. We learn from Herodotus (lib. 6) that the'Persians in remote thies were waited upon by eunuchs, and some attribute to them their introduction. Ammianus. Marcellinus (lib. 14) ascribes the orig,in to Semiramis. Burton says that they were not known in Arabia at the time of Mahomed ; but in the chapter of the Koran on Nur or Light, men who have no need of women are spoken of as persons before whom women may appear ; the learned, however do not agree as to who were there meant. Burton also (Pilgrim age, ii. 74 to 155) mentions eunuchs coining to the prophet's tomb. Nearly all the slave-hunters in Abyssinia, when they catch a young lad, mutilate him completely, and send him over to Mecca ; and lads are still said to be mutilated in Rajputana and in Aurangabad. Dr. Wolff (Bokhara, vi. p.
217) mentions that in his time several of the eunuchs were married to several wives, and he instances Manujar Khan, the governor of Isfahan ; others of them have wives. Sir John Malcolm bad known only two or three instances of eunuchs being employed in situations of trust during the reign of the kino. of Persia, to whom he went as ambassador. de, however, observed that they were treated with uncommon attention and defer ence. In Hyderabad, in the Dekhan, eunuchs are few. Eunuchs in India have the title of Agha, also of Khajah, or Khojah. The eunuchs em ployed in the imperial haram of China sometimes rise to positions of eminence.—Malcolm's Persia, p. 438, 155, n. ; Burton's Mecca, p. 408.