112 carry some fire-trees, which burn throughout. Thus, this is one of the most beautiful things to see, at least after nightfall. Many nairs with bare swords also walk in front of the idol. Whenever they can they slash themselves, foaming and yelling, they seem bedevilled, and they say that it is the gods that have got inside them and this is how they are making it known. And many acrobats and jesters, governors of the realm and other respected men also join the procession, organising and supervising it, and thus they go in very orderly fashion to the king’s palace, where the procession breaks up. When he is seated, this King of Calicut very often has his closest men rubbing his arms; legs, and body. He is always attended by a page who has a towel over his shoulder, full of betel. He gives it to him to chew, sometimes in a small golden or painted box with silverfinishings, at other times in a gold basin; the page takes it leaf by leaf and adds a little shellfish lime slaked in rose-water, like an ointment, which he keeps in a small gold box, and he gives him the leaf with areca, which as I explained in greater detail at another point, the betel has such good properties that he constantly chews it both day and night. His eating habit is that nobody should be in the place where he is eating, nor see him eat, only four or five servers who wait on him; before he eats, he washes himself in a large, clean tank in his palace. He conducts his ceremonies there, naked, worshipping towards the wind three times, walking around and diving under the water three times. He puts on clean cloths there and then goes into a house which he keeps completely empty so that he can eat. It is coated in dung, or they put a round board on the floor for him to eat, because they eat seated on the ground. They bring him a large silver bowl, which is shallow and has no brims, with many small silver pots, which are all empty and which they put on another board on thefloor, just like the one he is sitting on, putting the little pots all in order around the edge of the large bowl.
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