[Avodah] What is a saris?

[Michael Kopinsky]

On Purim, I had an argument with someone (he happened to be shikker at the
time, which certainly fed into the argument) which eventually led to me
being accused of departing from mesores chazal, and for the rest of the
seudah, this person called me "Maskil".  (Though to his defense, I should
have known better than to defend Mendelssohn in Lakewood.)

My shocking statement that led to all this was that when the Megillah says
sarisei hamelech, it means eunuchs, and not just servants.

Afterward, I mentioned this to several people, including former Kollel
yungerleit, and the reaction I got was always, "Yeah, I guess it could be, I
never thought about that."

A search of mefarshim and midrashim only megillah turned up nothing, except
for the Targum which says Rabbanaya.

Looking in the Even-Shoshan Concordance, he has three definitions of saris:
a) castrated man, b) eunuch, c) servant, and brings examples of each.  An
admittedly too-brief look at those mekoros does not convince me that any of
those examples have to be davka not eunuchs, and it may be that
Even-Shoshan's three definitions coincide completely.

The one question I had with my understanding:  Something in my subconscious
is telling me that Haman = mehuman, which is a problem since Haman had kids
and mehuman was a saris.  However, a search of Otzar Hamidrashim as well as
of Google turned up no identification of Haman as Mehuman, only as Memuchan.

Any comments on my translation of saris as eunuch?  Am I crazy, or are all
the people who are surprised by my translation crazy?

KT,
Michael
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