164 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
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 Sutledge to the sea-coast, and from the 
Himalaya to Cape Comorin. One narrow district alone was free, the 
Conean, beyond the ghauts, whither they never penetrated.” In Ben- 
gal, river Thugs, of whom I shall tell you hereafter, replace the travel- 
ling practitioner. Khandush and Rohilcund alone harboured, no 
c as residents, but they were nevertheless haunted by the gangs. 
origin is uncertain, but supposed to be very early, soon after 
the ^ wea 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. It is only lately 
that they have swarmed so prodigiously,—seven original gangs having 
migrated from Delhi to the Gangetic provinces about 200 years ago, 
and from these 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, or 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 jackall crosses the road; and even 
far more trivial circumstances will determine the fate of a dozen of 
people, and perhaps an immense treasure. All worship the pick-axe, 
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. They 
rise through various grades to the highest of strangler; the lowest are 
scouts ; second, sextons; the third are holders of the victims’ hands. 
oug 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 identi- 
fied,—there are several variations in their mode of conducting opera- 
tious. 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 diseountenanee by the Goddess Davee, and 
