March, 1848. THUGS. 67 



Government, and incredible activity and acnteness 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." In Bengal, river Thugs 

 replace the travelling practitioner. 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. 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 



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