Thug

“ We kill only in honour of Kali, of Bowani, the all-mighty, great Mother of the Universe. For to her devout worshippers, the thugs, did she not give one of her teeth for a pickaxe, a rib for a knife, and the hem of her lower garment for a noose? So we strangle in her service, and with every victim the act becomes more and more a delight to the soul.' As he spoke, his muscular fingers and wrists automatically went through the motions of tying and drawing the fatal noose. 'Once a man has become a thug, he will remain a thug all the rest of his days. ”

“ Are you thieves? if so, take what you will from us and let us go."
"We are not thieves," said Peer Khan; "but stay quiet, we are worse."
"Worse! then, brother, we are lost," cried one to the other; "these villains are Thugs; it is even as I whispered to you when you must needs stop among them: they have been at their horrid work, and yonder lie those whom they have destroyed."
"Yes," said I, "unhappy men, you have guessed right; yonder lie the dead, and you will soon be numbered with them; it is useless to strive against your destiny." ”

“ Yet I once more uplifted my voice. 'Nuwab!' I exclaimed, 'it is of no use to contend further with destiny; were we a thousand times innocent, this array of facts against us would convict us. I now conceal not that we are Thugs—followers of the blessed Bhowanee, who will receive us into Paradise. We shall die by your command, but why should that vile wretch live?—he who, for a greedy demand of more than his share, which he knew he could not receive according to our laws, has denounced us, has broken his oath, and been unfaithful to the salt he has eaten? ”

“ Even severity seems thrown away upon the followers of this brutalizing creed. To them, punishment is no example; they have no sympathy for a brother Thug who is hung at his own door by the British Government, nor have they any dread of his fate. Their invariable idea is, that their goddess only suffers those Thugs to fall into the hands of the law, who have contravened the peculiar observances of Thuggee, and who have neglected the omens she sent them for their guidance. ”

“ But do they say there are Thugs on the road, and who or what are they? the term is new to me."
"Why truly I can hardly tell you, Meer Sahib. The Thugs, they say, are people who feign one thing or other, till they get unwary travellers into their power, and then destroy them ”

“ Such are the descriptions we have heard and read of murderers, but these Thugs are unlike any others. No remorse seems to possess their souls. In the weariness of perpetual imprisonment one would think their imaginations and recollections of the past would be insupportable to them; but no,—they eat, drink, and sleep like others, are solicitous about their dress, ever ready to talk over the past, and would if released to-morrow, again follow their dreadful profession with a fresh zest after their temporary preclusion from it. ”

“ I asked; "all the world say that Thugs are never to be taken in."
The fellow laughed scornfully. "Never taken in!" said he; "did not I deceive them? They are swine, they are asses; they murder poor travellers, but they have no wit, not so much as children. Their fool of a Jemadar tried to deceive me by wrapping his face in a cloth ”

“ How much higher game is a Thug's! His is man: against his fellow-creatures in every degree, from infancy to old age, he has sworn relentless, unerring destruction!
Ah! you are a horrible set of miscreants, said I; I have indeed the experience, from the records of murders which are daily being unfolded to me, of knowing this at least of you. But you must begin your story; I am prepared to listen to details worse than I can imagine human beings to have ever perpetrated.
It will even be as you think, said Ameer Ali, and I will conceal nothing ”

“ He explained to me how the gang waylay the unwary traveller, enter into conversation with him, and have him suddenly seized, when the superior throws his own girdle round the victim's neck and strangles him, pressing the knuckles against the spine. Taking off his own girdle, he passed it round my arm, and showed me the turn as coolly as a sailor once taught me the hangman's knot. The Thug is of any caste, and from any part of India. The profession have particular stations, which they generally select for murder, throwing the body of their victim into a well. ”

“ One thing I cannot understand is why so desperate a scoundrel should pause in the middle of his [Pg 192] deadly work, and leave your poor father living, though unconscious. It is deemed the greatest possible disgrace for a Thug to attack his victim with the 'noose' and fail to kill him. Of course, as a rule, the Stranglers—as they are called—work together, but against one old man a single Thug should be able to carry out his grim work thoroughly. ”

“ No! on the contrary, they increase, and from every Thug who accepts the alternative of perpetual imprisonment to dying on a gallows, you learn of others whom even I knew not of, and of Thuggee being carried on in parts of the country where it is least suspected, and has never been discovered till lately. ”

“ The Thugs were a well-organized confederacy of professional assassins, who in gangs of from 10 to 200 travelled in various guises through India, wormed themselves into the confidence of wayfarers of the wealthier class, and, when a favourable opportunity occurred, strangled them by hanging a handkerchief or noose round their necks, and then plundered and buried them. ”

“ A series of the most cold-blooded, callous murders and robberies, the work, on the face of it, of a well-organized band of thugs, brutal, insensate, little better than fiends, though clever enough so far to have evaded capture, clever enough, indeed, to have kept the police still staggering and gasping after a clew for one murder—while another was in the very act of being committed! The Gray Seal! ”

“ You never hear of their blowing open a safe, and, though they are passionate and hot tempered, they are not often charged with murder. The Bowery thug and yeggman are much more dangerous enemies to society than the average gipsy. ”

“ Yoosuf Khan, why should you take those poor lads of yours on to Indoor with you? why not send them back from the stage we are now approaching? I and my men are ample protection to you; and as you will belong to the same service as myself, there can be no harm in your trusting yourself and family to my protection for the rest of the journey; besides, the dangerous part of the road, the jungle in which we have been for the last two days, is passed, and the country before us is open. The only fear of Thugs and thieves existed in them, and they are now far behind. ”

“ From this period, the system for the suppression of Thuggee may be said to have commenced in earnest; from almost every gang one or more informers were admitted; and when they found that their only chance of life lay in giving correct information, they unequivocally denounced their associates, and their statements were confirmed by the disinterment of their victims in the spots pointed out.
In this manner Thuggee was found to be in active practice all over India. ”

“ It has been ascertained by recent investigation that in every part of India many of the hereditary landholders and the chief officers of villages have had private connexion with Thugs for generations, affording them facilities for murder by allowing their atrocious acts to pass with impunity, and sheltering the offenders when in danger ”

“ Beyond all, however, the Thugs have of late years been discovered to be the most numerous, the most united, the most secret in their horrible work, and consequently the most dangerous and destructive. ”

“ Brave and reckless as they are, they have no wit, and will never find us out."
"I don't know that," said my father; "they are not so stupid as you think; I know much of them, have killed some of them, and they were cunning enough. Several gangs of them have escaped Thugs by being able to detect them. However, I see nothing objectionable in your plan; and at any rate, it will furnish excuse for a new expedition."
"Ay," said Ganesha, who was present, "let us go; I long to see the Meer Sahib act. ”

“ I of course alarmed him as much as I could with accounts of the thieves and Thugs on the road, and represented ourselves to be a company of travellers proceeding also to Nagpoor, on our way to the Dukhun, and associated together for mutual protection; and that we always rested outside the villages, as being the safest places when our number was so large. ”

“ Therefore, upon every man who was once a Thug, and upon his sons and grandsons, you may depend. I do not say that they would be useful for fighting, for we have never been fighters, but the stranglers will be of use. ”

“ The members of one party may be sometimes convicted and punished, but their conviction is accidental, for the system which has enabled us to put down the Thug associations cannot be applied, with any fair prospect of success, to the suppression of these pests to society. [16]
The Thugs went on their adventures in large gangs, and two or more were commonly united in the course of an expedition in the perpetration of many murders. Every man shared in the booty according to the rank he held in the gang, or the part he took in the murders ”

“ Lugha, the grave-digger; Lutkuneea, a very small purse, used exclusively by Thugs and professional thieves; Maulee, or Phoola, the Thug entrusted with the duty of taking to the village the money sent by the absent gang for the maintenance of their wives and families; Nawureea, a novice on his first expedition—sometimes they were compelled to kick the first murdered man five times on the back; Nissar, safe, as applied to any suitable place for lodging at, murdering, or dividing spoil—opposed to tikkur, unsafe; Paoo, an accomplice of Thugs; Pehloo, or Sikka, or Roomal, the handkerchief. ”

“ The information the English officers had obtained—Alla only knows how—was correct. In a very few months after we were settled in our new abode, we heard that the whole Purgunna of Murnae had been attacked, village by village. Many of the best and bravest of the Thugs had died defending their homes ”

“ I have heard too that they have handsome women with them who pretend distress on the roads, and decoy travellers who may have soft hearts, to help them; then they fasten on them, and they have some charm from the Shitan which enables them to keep their hold till their associates come up, despite of all the efforts of the person so ensnared to gain his liberty. And that either thieves, or Thugs, or rascals of some kind or other do infest the highways is most true, for many travellers disappear in an unaccountable manner. ”

“ Instead of appropriating this valuable prize, he drove the mule home, assembled his neighbours, and distributed to each the share to which he would have been entitled had he been actually present at the murder. For this remarkable display of honour and self-denial, both he and his wife were canonized. The leadership was usually the reward of merit. "A man," said one of them, "who has always at command the means of advancing a month or two's subsistence to a gang, will be called a Jemadar; a strong, resolute man, whose ancestors have been for many generations Thugs, will soon get the title ”

“ Another gang accomplished 160 miles in twelve days, in company with a party of sixty—men, women and a child—before they found an eligible occasion. [Pg 64] They preferred committing murder in the evening, when the travellers would be seated on the ground, mingled with themselves, talking, smoking, singing, and playing the sitar. Where it could be done without suspicion, three Thugs were allotted to every victim. ”

“ In the year 1812, soon after the murder of Lieutenant Monsell, a number of Thugs were arrested by certain Zemindars and grievously beaten, in the hope of making them bid high [Pg 40] for their release. Their excessive cupidity, however, defeated its own ends. During their thirteen months imprisonment, forty of the Thugs perished from the dampness of their dungeon, combined with the ill-treatment they endured. The survivors insisted that their comrades were tortured to death by a demon, who entered the prison every night during the wet season. ”

“ To their neglect of the warnings of the goddess they attribute all the reverses which have of late years befallen their sect. It is expressly forbidden, in the creed of the old Thugs, to murder women or cripples. The modern Thugs have become unscrupulous upon this point, murdering women, and even children, with unrelenting barbarity. Captain Sleeman reports several conversations upon this subject, which he held at different times with Thugs, who had been taken prisoners, or who had turned approvers. ”

“ Gang after gang was captured, tried, and punished. The Thugs were harried and hunted from one end of India to the other. The government got all their secrets out of them; and also got the names of the members of the bands, and recorded them in a book, together with their birthplaces and places of residence.
The Thugs were worshipers of Bhowanee; and to this god they sacrificed anybody that came handy; but they kept the dead man’s things themselves, for the god cared for nothing but the corpse. Men were initiated into the sect with solemn ceremonies. ”