bumps behind his ears, or prominence of eyebrow
region, but a remarkable cerebellum.
Though now all but extinct (except in Cuttack)*
through ten or fifteen years of unceasing vigilance on
the part of Government, and incredible activity and
acuteness in the officers employed, the Thugs were
formerly a wonderfully numerous body, who abstained
from their vocation solely in the immediate neighbourhood
of their own villages; which, however, were not
exempt from the visits of other Thugs; so that, as
Major Sleeman says,—“ The annually returning tide
of murder swept unsparingly over the whole face of
India, from the Sutlej to the sea-coast, and from the
Himalaya to Cape Comorin. One narrow district
alone was free, the Concan, beyond the ghats, whither
they never penetrated.” Candeish and Rohilkund
alone harboured no Thugs as residents, but they were
nevertheless haunted by the gangs.
Their origin is uncertain, but supposed to be very
ancient, soon after the Mahommedan conquest. They
now claim a divine original, and are supposed to have
supernatural powers, and to be the emissaries of the
divinity, like the wolf, the tiger, and the bear. I t is
only lately that they have swarmed so prodigiously,—
seven original gangs having migrated from Delhi to
the Gangetic provinces about 200 years ago, from
which all the rest have sprung. Many belong to the
most amiable, intelligent, and respectable classes of
the lower and even middle ranks : they love their profession,
regard murder as sport, and are never haunted
with dreams, nor troubled with pangs of conscience
during hours of solitude, or in the last moments of life.
The victim is an acceptable sacrifice to the goddess
Davee, who by some classes is supposed to eat the
lifeless body, and thus save her votaries the necessity
of concealing it.
They are extremely superstitious, always consulting
omens, such as the direction in which a hare or
jackal crosses the ro ad ; and even far more trivial circumstances
will determine the fate of a dozen of people,
and perhaps of an immense treasure. All worship the
pickaxe, which is symbolical of their profession, and
an oath sworn on it binds closer than on the Koran.
The consecration of this weapon is a most elaborate
ceremony, and takes place only under certain trees.
The Thugs rise through various grades: the lowest are
scouts; the second, sextons; the third are holders of
the victim’s hands; the highest, stranglers.
Though all agree in never practising cruelty, or
robbing previous to murder,—never allowing any but
infants to escape (and these are trained to Thuggee),
and never leaving a trace of such goods as may be
identified,—there are several variations in their mode
of conducting operations: some tribes spare certain
castes, others none; murder of woman is against all
rules; but the practice crept into certain gangs, and this
it is which led to their discountenance by the goddess
Davee, and the consequent downfall of the system.
Davee, they say, allowed the British to punish them,
because a certain gang had murdered the mothers to
obtain their daughters to be sold to prostitution.
Major Sleeman has constructed a map demonstrating