Thuggee

“ Thuggee became known to the British authorities in India about 1810, but its wide prevalence was not suspected; it was not regarded as a serious matter, and no systematic measures were taken for its suppression until about 1830. About that time Major Sleeman captured Eugene Sue's Thug-chief, "Feringhea," and got him to turn King's evidence. The revelations were so stupefying that Sleeman was not able to believe them. Sleeman thought he knew every criminal within his jurisdiction, and that the worst of them were merely thieves ”

“ Next followed questions as to my present plans; and when he heard I was alone and travelling with merchants, of course it naturally followed that some plan should be undertaken for their destruction.
"Look you, Meer Sahib," said he, "I believe I can muster as many as fifteen Thugs in and near this place. I am not suspected as yet, but the country is getting too hot for us, and we must either quit it or give up Thuggee, which [260] no man, you well know, can do after he has eaten the goor ”

“ From that day I put myself under the tuition of the Gooroo, or teacher of the band,—an old Thug who was worn out with age, but had been considered to be one of the most dexterous Bhuttotes, or stranglers, who had lived within the memories of any of the men of our company. He was a Hindoo, a Rajpoot; and though his frame was dry and shrivelled, yet from his height, breadth of shoulders, and sinews, which were developed the more by the absence of flesh to cover them, it was easy to see that he had been a man of immense strength and power ”

“ It is a curious people. With them, all life seems to be sacred except human life. Even the life of vermin is sacred, and must not be taken. The good Jain wipes off a seat before using it, lest he cause the death of-some valueless insect by sitting down on it. It grieves him to have to drink water, because the provisions in his stomach may not agree with the microbes. Yet India invented Thuggery and the Suttee. India is a hard country to understand. We went to the temple of the Thug goddess, Bhowanee, or Kali, or Durga. ”

“ Captain Sleeman having declared that neither he nor his native officers cared one jot for their goddess, and that they were determined to put down her worship in [Pg 12] this form, one of them replied, "They may say so, but they all know that no man's family can survive a murder committed in any other way; and yet Thugs have thrived through a long series of generations. We have all children like other men, and we are never visited with any extraordinary affliction." ”

“ The bullocks and their drivers, with the Thugs, were all in a confused group in the bed of the little stream, the men shouting and urging on their beasts: but it was easy to see that every man had a Thug close to him awaiting the signal. They were only a few feet below us and the stream was so narrow that it was with some difficulty all could stand in its bed, especially when the cart reached the bottom. Above stood my father, Hoosein, and myself,—the Sahoukar, one of his servants, and several other Thugs. ”

“ There is one very striking thing which I wish to call attention to. You have surmised from the listed callings followed by the victims of the Thugs that nobody could travel the Indian roads unprotected and live to get through; that the Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed man that came in their way. That is wholly true—with one reservation. In all the long file of Thug confessions an English traveler is mentioned but once—and this is what the Thug says of the circumstance:
"He was on his way from Mhow to Bombay. ”

“ I had purchased for the worthy Potail a handsome turban and waistband, and had prepared for him a number of other articles, one of which was an English pistol, which he had sent word by a Thug that I was to purchase for him. As soon as I arrived, I went into the village to him, and in his own house tied the turban on his head, presented him with the gifts I had prepared, and added a purse of twenty rupees.
"Ha!" said he, "what now, Meer Sahib? you are not used to be so liberal. What bunij have you, that you are come with it to my poor place, to give it a worse name than it has already?" ”

“ I do believe that evil will follow the murder of a man with a cow. If there be no cow it does not signify." Another Thug said he held the cowherd's feet while this witness did the strangling. He felt no concern, "because the bad fortune of such a deed is upon the strangler and not upon the assistants; even if there should be a hundred of them."
There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many generations. ”

“ We had proceeded nearly as far as Saugor, with but indifferent success, considering our large body, having only killed fourteen travellers, and got but little booty; when one night, as my father and myself, with a few others, sat in our little tent, we heard the ekarea—that most dreadful of all omens to a Thug. The ekarea is the short sharp bark or call of the jackal, uttered in the first watch of the night: in itself there is something peculiarly melancholy and appalling, but to a Thug the sound is one of horror. ”

“ Thumbelina gazed after him with the tears standing in her eyes, for she was very fond of the swallow.
‘Tweet, tweet!’ sang the bird, and flew into the green wood. Thumbelina was very unhappy. She was not allowed to go out into the warm sunshine. The corn which had been sowed in the field over the field-mouse’s home grew up high into the air, and made a thick forest for the poor little girl, who was only an inch high.
‘Now you are to be a bride, Thumbelina!’ said the field-mouse, ‘for our neighbour has proposed for you! What a piece of fortune for a poor child like you! ”

“ It is indeed too true, Ameer Ali, said I, your old vocation seems to be as flourishing as ever, but it cannot last. Men will get tired of exposing themselves to the chance of being hunted down like wild beasts, and hanged when they are caught; or what is perhaps worse to many, of being sent over the Kala-Panee [2] ; and so heartily does the Government pursue Thugs wherever they are known to exist, that there will no longer be a spot of ground in India where your profession can be practised.
You err, Sahib; you know not the high and stirring excitement of a Thug's occupation. ”

“ Why, the Thug was content to tramp patiently along, afoot, in the wasting heat of India, week after week, at an average of nine or ten miles a day, if he might but hope to find game some time or other and refresh his longing soul with blood. Here is an instance:
"I (Ramzam) and Hyder set out, for the purpose of strangling travelers, from Guddapore, and proceeded via the Fort of Julalabad, Newulgunge, Bangermow, on the banks of the Ganges (upwards of 100 miles) , from whence we returned by another route. Still no travelers! ”

“ One would be apt to imagine that the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly destitute of human feelings, heartless toward their own families as well as toward other people’s; but this was not so. Like all other Indians, they had a passionate love for their kin. A shrewd British officer who knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into account in laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue’s famous Feringhea. He found out Feringhea’s hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize him, but the squad was awkward and he got away. ”

“ In each blossom there dwelt a tiny man or woman; but this one was the King over the others.
‘How handsome he is!’ whispered Thumbelina to the swallow.
The little Prince was very much frightened at the swallow, for in comparison with one so tiny as himself he seemed a giant. But when he saw Thumbelina, he was delighted, for she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. So he took his golden crown from off his head and put it on hers, asking her her name, and if she would be his wife, and then she would be Queen of all the flowers. Yes! ”

“ Between the going and coming of the leaves the sky is background for the cunning lacework of twigs. Were it always May, we should never see how finely wrought is the loom upon which those leafy embroideries are woven. In autumn the design is more austere, the colors show more somber, but when the March branches flush with sap, and the buds, waking, put forth hesitant green fingers, that infinitely complex tracery of the twigs is a spring charm as moving as the perfume of the thorn. Outlined against a sunset, it foretells in beauty the months when the leaf chorus will sound with the birds’. ”

“ Sometimes it would be a low rustling, as though made by some body gliding through the foliage. Sometimes it would be the snapping of a twig—behind us, off to the right, perhaps, or to the left; never in front of us. Alas, it grieves me to do so, but I am constrained by the love of truth, and by nothing else, to inform the admirers of that great scientist Mark Twain that twigs do snap when they are stepped upon. ”

“ The business which the Thug leaders had assembled to deliberate upon, was a plan of my father's, for a large body under himself and two other leaders (one of whom was Hoosein) , to take the high road to the Dukhun; to advance together as far as Nagpoor, from whence my father was to proceed to Hyderabad; and the others separating, one to go to Aurungabad, thence through Khândésh, by Boorhanpoor, to Indore, and back to Sheopoor; the other also to Aurungabad, but from thence to Poona; afterwards, if possible, as far as Surat, and from thence homewards ”

“ Bhugwan grant that we may hereafter journey in company, and as safely as we have done! Thanks to your care in protecting us outside the villages, we have not lost a cowree; and we have been taught a new mode of encamping, which we will follow in future. The moon will last us the whole night, and we shall have twenty coss of ground behind us by the time you wake from your night's sleep."
The Thugs had taken their places; to each Rokurrea were four stout men allotted, and I marvelled that they should have thus allowed themselves to be separated from each other. ”

“ My hour is come, and my fate has led me on thus far to desert me at last! thought I; it is the will of Bhowanee and of Alla, why should I resist?
Seeing me quiet, the Rajah addressed me. "Ah, Ameer Ali," said he; "what is this I hear of thee, that thou art a Thug, a common murderer? Can this be [251] true of one who was looked up to in Jhalone as a merchant, and a respectable man? What hast thou to say? Speak, man, and prove if thou canst to me, that the accusations I hear against thee are false." ”

“ The old man turns at the barn, but Mike comes on down to us.
“Howdy,” says Mike. “How’s everything, boys?”
“Ain’t able to kick,” says Telescope. “How’s it with you?”
“Tolable. See Doughgod in town?”
“He was there the last we seen of him,” admits Muley. “Why?”
“Going down to see him. Dang this trustee business, anyway. Nothing but trouble. Me and the old man have decided to accept that teacher that wrote to Doughgod, even if she is a female. Never mix into the school-teacher business, boys. She’s ——!”
“She is,” agrees Muley, and we all nods. ”

“ We had met several bands of such men on our road down to Nagpoor, so that our company presented no extraordinary or suspicious appearance, especially under my father, who looked like a soldier, was always well armed and dressed, rode a fine horse, and on occasions of residing in, or even passing through a city, was always attended by a number of the Thugs as his escort; and his appearance was certainly what he represented himself to be to the Sahoukar. ”

“ To the south of the Nerbudda old women did not always escape, or even young [Pg 14] women, when it was found impossible to separate them from a tempting prize. Between the Nerbudda, the Indus, and the Jumna, the Thugs had few scruples of any kind. It was likewise unlawful to murder a Brahman or a Kaet (member of the writer caste) , or a religious mendicant of any kind, or oilman, potter, carpenter, blacksmith, goldsmith, elephant-driver, musician, dancing-master, or any one having a domestic animal with him, or carrying a parent's bones to the sacred river. ”

“ We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great surprise to him. Higbie said:
“We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out any more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter—nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to take you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. ”

“ The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert foolishness) , instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we leave it alone. All the old families do that way. ”

“ They usually travelled with their families as Brinjarees, with bullocks and cows laden with goods, and strangled their victims with a bullock's rope. A colony of about one hundred families was settled at Hingolee. [Pg 9] A very clever and staunch tribe, known as the Jumaldehee Thugs, settled in Oude, who prudently kept their wives in ignorance of the true nature of their pursuits, nor did they initiate their sons till they had reached the age of puberty. ”