JesusA (imported) wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2001 1:39 pm By their nature, naturally, eunuchs have always been something of odd-persons-out. But in other times, other dispensations, that was precisely what made them so valuable - and what ensured their kind's constitutionally impossible perpetuation from dimmest antiquity forward. Eunuchdom's history can be traced back to the beginnings of recorded civilisation in the Bronze Age, when the institution of sacred kingship was founded not long after the discovery of fatherhood's function. Women's loss of exclusive hold on the mystery of childbirth led to a social revolution that was to make usurping males suspicious of all rivals to authority. This was an era chronicled by myth and peopled by gods and heroes. And the gods, it seemed, were the first to favour geldings.<p>The Hindu hijiras, in fact, find their own origins in that golden age. In their folklore, before the climatic battle in the Mahabharata, one of India's two oldest epics, the hero Arjuna paraded in disguise as a eunuch to please the gods, who rewarded him with superhuman powers. Another legend holds that Lord Rama, after his fourteen years of exile in the wilderness (during which most of the events of the Ramayana unfold), returned to his kingdom of Ayodhya to find only eunuchs waiting to greet him, his other subjects having obeyed his own instruction that "every man and woman" who felt insecure in his absence should leave. Recognising his oversight too late, so the tale goes, Rama made amends by extending them royal patronage.<p>From then till the 19th century, eunuchs move freely in India's back rooms of power. Indeed, everywhere that kings, emperors, pharaohs, satraps and khans held court, eunuchs, from their humble beginnings as stewards of the harem and tutors of concubines, gained an unusual degree of trust as the overlord's confidants and spies, as well as the most efficient messengers for royal lovers. Though the Gujarati hijiras claim that their fraternity is replenished by special providence ordained by their goddess Bahucharamata (by legend, originally a Barot maiden who cut off her breasts to save her virginity from a band of marauders), historically most eunuchs were either sold in childhood by impoverished parents or emasculated as punishment for crimes.<p>Perhaps nowhere did eunuchs achieve such heights of power and privilege as they managed from time to time in imperial China. After castration was abolished in the 6th century as a legal penalty, the emperors drew quotas of neutered boys as tribute from the southern and southwestern frontier provinces. In the Tang Dynasty, eunuch counsellors gained rank and authority rivalling even the chief ministers and army commanders; as the unofficial powers behind the throne, anointing their own favourites as the Son of Heaven, the weakened the sovereign office through their intrigues to the point of the empire's eventual disintegration.<p>In the Ming Dynasty, eunuchs reemerged as a force to be reckoned with, especially under the Yongle (formerly romanized as Yung-lo) emperor (1402-24), who made them treasurers, foreign envoys and regional overseers of garrisons. In 1420, moreover, the emperor established an entirely eunuch-staffed secret police agency called the Eastern Depot, later to grow into a fearsome instrument of terror. The most estimable taijian of this era, and perhaps all eras, was the famous "Three-Jewelled Eunuch Prince," Zheng He (Cheng Ho), an admiral who commanded all seven of China's most illustrious maritime expeditions to Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and East Africa between 1405 and 1433.<p>Born a Chinese Muslim with the name Ma (the Chinese rendition of "Muhammed") in the southern province of Yunnan, Zheng He was captured and castrated in his youth by the reconquering Ming armies. Schooled in the northern military, he gained early renown as a naval officer and on his major voyages extended Chinese suzerainty over protectorates throughout the Indian Ocean. From his first call at Malacca, which he used as a supply base, can be dated the introduction of Nanyang Chinese traders in the Malay States, an even of no small consequence.<p>During the Mughal period, Indian eunuchs enjoyed their own highest patronage, but the decline of royalty spelled a hijira fall from grace. When the British dethroned the last Mughal emperor in 1858, hundred were drive into the streets to scratch out a new livelihood - and recede even deeper into society's shadows.<p>---Asiaweek, November 19, 1982, page 26