The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume IV of IV

R >> R.V. Russell >> The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume IV of IV

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5. Account of certain murders

The secrecy and adroitness with which the Thugs conducted their murders
are well illustrated by the narrative of the assassination of a native
official or pleader at Lakhnadon in Seoni as given by one of the gang:
[684] "We fell in with the Munshi and his family at Chhapara between
Nagpur and Jubbulpore; and they came on with us to Lakhnadon, where
we found that some companies of a native regiment under European
officers were expected the next morning. It was determined to put
them all to death that evening as the Munshi seemed likely to join
the soldiers. The encampment was near the village and the Munshi's
tent was pitched close to us. In the afternoon some of the officers'
tents came on in advance and were pitched on the other side, leaving us
between them and the village. The _khalasis_ were all busily occupied
in pitching them. Nur Khan and his son Sadi Khan and a few others went
as soon as it became dark to the Munshi's tent, and began to play and
sing upon a _sitar_ as they had been accustomed to do. During this
time some of them took up the Munshi's sword on pretence of wishing
to look at it. His wife and children were inside listening to the
music. The _jhirni_ or signal was given, but at this moment the Munshi
saw his danger, called out murder, and attempted to rush through,
but was seized and strangled. His wife hearing him ran out with the
infant in her arms, but was seized by Ghabbu Khan, who strangled
her and took the infant. The other daughter was strangled in the
tent. The _saises_ (grooms) were at the time cleaning their horses,
and one of them seeing his danger ran under the belly of his horse
and called murder; but he was soon seized and strangled as well as
all the rest. In order to prevent the party pitching the officers'
tents from hearing the disturbance, as soon as the signal was given
those of the gang who were idle began to play and sing as loud as they
could; and two vicious horses were let loose, and many ran after them
calling out as loud as they could; so that the calls of the Munshi and
his party were drowned." They thought at first of keeping the infant,
but decided that it was too risky, and threw it alive into the grave
in which the other bodies had been placed. It is surprising to realise
that in the above case about half a dozen people, awake and conscious,
were killed forcibly in broad daylight within a few paces of a number
of men occupied in pitching tents, without their noticing anything of
the matter; and this may certainly be characterised as an instance of
murder as a fine art to show the absolute callousness of the Thugs
towards their victims and the complete absence of any feelings of
compassion, the story of the following murder by the same gang may be
recorded. [685] The Thugs were travelling from Nagpur toward Jubbulpore
with a party consisting of Newal Singh, a Jemadar (petty officer)
in the Nizam's army, his brother, his two daughters, one thirteen and
the other eleven years old, his son about seven years old, two young
men who were to marry the daughters, and four servants. At Dhurna the
house in which the Thugs lodged took fire, and the greater number
of them were seized by the police, but were released at the urgent
request of Newal Singh and his two daughters, who had taken a great
fancy to Khimoli, the principal leader of the gang, and some of the
others. Newal Singh was related to a native officer of the British
detachment at Seoni and obtained his assistance for the release of
the Thugs. At this time the gang had with them two bags of silk, the
property of three carriers whom they had murdered in the great temple
of Kamptee, and if they had been searched by the police these must have
been discovered. On reaching Jubbulpore the Thugs found a lodging in
the town with Newal Singh and his family. But the merchants who were
expecting the silk from Nagpur and found that it had not arrived,
induced the Kotwal to search the lodging of the Thugs. Hearing of the
approach of the police, the leader Khimoli again availed himself of
the attachment of Newal Singh and his daughters, and the girls were
made to sit each upon one of the two bags of silk while the police
searched the place. Nothing was found and the party again set out;
and five days afterwards Newal Singh and his whole family were murdered
at Biseni by the Thugs whom they had twice preserved from arrest.

6. Special incidents (continued)

These murderers looked on all travellers as their legitimate prey,
as sportsmen regard game. On one occasion the noted Thug, Feringia,
[686] with his gang were cooking their dinners under some trees on
the road when five travellers came by, but could not be persuaded
to stop and partake of the meal, saying they wished to sleep at a
place called Hirora that night, and had yet eight miles to go. The
Thugs afterwards followed, but found no traces of the travellers at
Hirora. Feringia therefore concluded that they must have fallen into
the hands of another gang, and suddenly recollected having passed an
encampment of Banjaras (pack-carriers) not far from the town. On the
following morning he accordingly went back with a few of his comrades,
and at once recognised a horse and pony which he had observed in
the possession of the travellers. So he asked the Banjaras, "What
have you done with the five travellers, my good friends? You have
taken from us our _banij_ (merchandise)." They apologised for what
they had done, pleading ignorance of the lien of the other Thugs,
and offered to share the booty; but Feringia declined, as none of
his party had been present at the _loading._ They were accustomed to
distinguish their most important exploits by the number of persons
who were killed. Thus one murder in the Jubbulpore District was known
as the 'Sathrup,' or 'Sixty soul affair,' and another in Bilaspur
as the 'Chalisrup,' or 'Murder of forty.' At this time (1807) the
road between northern and southern India through the Nerbudda valley
had been rendered so unsafe by the incursions of the Pindaris that
travellers preferred to go through Chhattisgarh and Sambalpur to the
Ganges. This route, passing for long distances through dense forest,
offered great advantages to the Thugs, and was soon infested by
them. In 1806, owing to the success [687] of previous expeditions,
it was determined that all the Thugs of northern India should work on
this road; accordingly after the Dasahra festival six hundred of them,
under forty Jemadars or leaders of note, set out from their homes,
and having worshipped in the temple of Devi at Bindhyachal, met at
Ratanpur in Bilaspur. The gangs split up, and after several murders
sixty of them came to Lanji in Balaghat, and here in two days' time
fell in with a party of thirty-one men, seven women and two girls on
their way to the Ganges. The Jemadars soon became intimate with the
principal men of the party, pretended to be going to the same part of
India and won their confidence; and next day they all set out and in
four days reached Ratanpur, where they met 160 Thugs returning from
the murder of a wealthy widow and her escort. Shortly afterwards
another 200 men who had heard of the travellers near Nagpur also
came up, but all the different bodies pretended to be strangers to
each other. They detached sixty men to return to Nagpur, leaving 360
to deal with the forty travellers. From Ratanpur they all journeyed
to Chura (Chhuri?), and here scouts were sent on to select a proper
place for the murder. This was chosen in a long stretch of forest,
and two men were despatched to the village of Sutranja, farther on
the road, to see that no one was coming in the opposite direction,
while another picket remained behind to prevent interruption from
the rear. By the time they reached the appointed place, the Bhurtots
(stranglers) and Shamsias (holders) had all on some pretext or other
got close to the side of the persons whom they were appointed to kill;
and on reaching the spot the signal was given in several places at
the same time; and thirty-eight out of forty were immediately seized
and strangled. One of the girls was a very handsome young woman, and
Pancham, a Jemadar, wished to preserve her as a wife for his son. But
when she saw her father and mother strangled she screamed and beat
her head against the ground and tried to kill herself. Pancham tried
in vain to quiet her, and promised to take great care of her and
marry her to his own son, who would be a great chief; but all to no
effect. She continued to scream, and at last Pancham put the _rumal_
(handkerchief) round her neck and strangled her. One little girl
of three years old was preserved by another Jemadar and married to
his son, and when she grew up often heard the story of the affair
narrated. The bodies were buried in a ravine and the booty amounted
to Rs. 17,000. The Thugs then decided to return home, and arrived
without mishap, except that the Jemadar, Pancham, died on the way.

7. Disguises of the Thugs

They were not particular, however, to ascertain that their victims
carried valuable property before disposing of them. Eight annas
(8d.), one of them said, [688] was sufficient remuneration for
murdering a man. On another occasion two river Thugs killed two
old men and obtained only a rupee's worth of coppers, two brass
vessels and their body-cloths. But as a rule the gains were much
larger. It sometimes happened that the Thugs themselves were robbed
at night by ordinary thieves, though they usually set a watch. On one
occasion a band of more than a hundred Thugs fell in with a party of
twenty-seven dacoits who had with them stolen property of Rs. 13,000
in cash, with gold ornaments, gems and shawls. The Thugs asked to be
allowed to travel under their protection, and the dacoits carelessly
assenting were shortly afterwards all murdered. [689] As already
stated, the Thugs were accustomed to live in towns or villages and
many of them ostensibly followed respectable callings. The following
instance of this is given by Sir W. Sleeman: [690] "The first party
of Thug approvers whom I sent into the Deccan to aid Captain Reynolds
recognised in the person of one of the most respectable linen-drapers
of the cantonment of Hingoli, Hari Singh, the adopted son of Jawahir
Sukul, Subahdar of Thugs, who had been executed twenty years before. On
hearing that the Hari Singh of the list sent to him of noted Thugs
at large in the Deccan was the Hari Singh of the Sadar Bazar, Captain
Reynolds was quite astounded; so correct had he been in his deportment
and all his dealings that he had won the esteem of all the gentlemen
of the station, who used to assist him in procuring passports for
his goods on their way from Bombay; and yet he had, as he has since
himself shown, been carrying on his trade of murder up to the very
day of his arrest with gangs of Hindustan and the Deccan on all the
roads around and close to the cantonments of Hingoli; and leading
out his band of assassins while he pretended to be on his way to
Bombay for a supply of fresh linen and broad-cloth." Another case is
quoted by Mr. Oman from Taylor's _Thirty-eight Years in India_. [691]
"Dr. Cheek had a child's bearer who had charge of his children. The
man was a special favourite, remarkable for his kind and tender ways
with his little charges, gentle in manner and unexceptionable in all
his conduct. Every year he obtained leave from his master and mistress,
as he said, for the filial purpose of visiting his aged mother for one
month; and returning after the expiry of that time, with the utmost
punctuality, resumed with the accustomed affection and tenderness
the charge of his little darlings. This mild and exemplary being was
the missing Thug; kind, gentle, conscientious and regular at his post
for eleven months in the year he devoted the twelfth to strangulation."

8. Secrecy of their operations

Again, as regards the secrecy with which murders were perpetrated and
all traces of them hidden, Sir W. Sleeman writes: [692] "While I was
in civil charge of the District of Narsinghpur, in the valley of the
Nerbudda, in the years 1822-1824, no ordinary robbery or theft could
be committed without my becoming aware of it, nor was there a robber
or thief of the ordinary kind in the District with whose character I
had not become acquainted in the discharge of my duties as magistrate;
and if any man had then told me that a gang of assassins by profession
resided in the village of Kandeli, [693] not four hundred yards from
my court, and that the extensive groves of the village of Mundesur,
only one stage from me on the road to Saugor and Bhopal, were one
of the greatest _beles_ or places of murder in all India, and that
large gangs from Hindustan and the Deccan used to _rendezvous_ in
these groves, remain in them for many days every year, and carry
on their dreadful trade along all the lines of road that pass by
and branch off from them, with the knowledge and connivance of the
two landholders by whose ancestors these groves had been planted, I
should have thought him a fool or a madman; and yet nothing could have
been more true. The bodies of a hundred travellers lie buried in and
around the groves of Mundesur; and a gang of assassins lived in and
about the village of Kandeli while I was magistrate of the District,
and extended their depredations to the cities of Poona and Hyderabad."

9. Support of landholders and villagers

The system of Thuggee reached its zenith during the anarchic period
of the decline of the Mughal Empire, when only the strongest and most
influential could obtain any assistance from the State in recovering
property or exacting reparation for the deaths of murdered friends
and relatives. Nevertheless, the Thugs could hardly have escaped
considerable loss even from private vengeance had they been compelled
to rely on themselves for protection. But this was not the case, for,
like the Badhaks and other robbers, they enjoyed the countenance and
support of landholders and ruling chiefs in return for presenting
them with the choicest of their booty and taking holdings of land at
very high rents. Sir W. Sleeman wrote [694] that, "The zamindars and
landholders of every description have everywhere been found ready to
receive these people under their protection from the desire to share
in the fruits of their expeditions, and without the slightest feeling
of religious or moral responsibility for the murders which they know
must be perpetrated to secure these fruits. All that they require
from them is a promise that they will not commit murders within their
estates and thereby involve them in trouble." Sometimes the police
could also be conciliated by bribes, and on one occasion when a body
of Thugs who had killed twenty-five persons were being pursued by
the Thakur of Powai [695] they retired upon the village of Tigura,
and even the villagers came out to their support and defended them
against his attack. Another officer wrote: [696] "To conclude, there
seems no doubt but that this horrid crime has been fostered by all
classes in the community--the landholders, the native officers of
our courts, the police and village authorities--all, I think, have
been more or less guilty; my meaning is not, of course, that every
member of these classes, but that individuals varying in number in
each class were concerned. The subordinate police officials have in
many cases been _practising Thugs_, and the _chaukidars_ or village
watchmen frequently so."

10. Murder of sepoys

A favourite class of victims were sepoys proceeding to their homes
on furlough and carrying their small savings; such men would not be
quickly missed, as their relatives would think they had not started,
and the regimental authorities would ascribe their failure to return
to desertion. So many of these disappeared that a special Army Order
was issued warning them not to travel alone, and arranging for the
transmission of their money through the Government treasuries. [697]
In this order it is stated that the Thugs were accustomed first to
stupefy their victim by surreptitiously administering the common
narcotic _dhatura_, still a familiar method of highway robbery.

11. Callous nature of the Thugs

Like the Badhaks and other Indian robbers and the Italian banditti the
Thugs were of a very religious or superstitious turn of mind. There
was not one among them, Colonel Sleeman wrote, [698] who doubted the
divine origin of Thuggee: "Not one who doubts that he and all who have
followed the trade of murder, with the prescribed rites and observance,
were acting under the immediate orders and auspices of the goddess,
Devi, Durga, Kali or Bhawani, as she is indifferently called, and
consequently there is not one who feels the slightest remorse for
the murders which he may have perpetrated or abetted in the course of
his vocation. A Thug considers the persons murdered precisely in the
light of victims offered up to the goddess; and he remembers them
as a priest of Jupiter remembered the oxen and a priest of Saturn
the children sacrificed upon their altars. He meditates his murders
without any misgivings, he perpetrates them without any emotions
of pity, and he recalls them without any feeling of remorse. They
trouble not his dreams, nor does their recollection ever cause him
inquietude in darkness, in solitude or in the hour of death."

And again: "The most extraordinary trait in the characters of these
people is not this that they can look back upon all the murders
they have perpetrated without any feelings of remorse, but that they
can look forward indifferently to their children, whom they love as
tenderly as any man in the world, following the same trade of murder
or being united in marriage to men who follow the trade. When I have
asked them how they could cherish these children through infancy and
childhood under the determination to make them murderers or marry
them to murderers, the only observation they have ever made was that
formerly there was no danger of their ever being hung or transported,
but that now they would rather that their children should learn some
less dangerous trade."

12. Belief in divine support

They considered that all their victims were killed by the agency
of God and that they were merely irresponsible agents, appointed
to live by killing travellers as tigers by feeding on deer. If a
man committed a real murder they held that his family must become
extinct, and adduced the fact that this fate had not befallen them
as proof that their acts of killing were justifiable. Nay, they even
held that those who oppressed them were punished by the goddess:
[699] "Was not Nanha, the Raja of Jalon," said one of them, "made
leprous by Devi for putting to death Budhu and his brother Khumoli,
two of the most noted Thugs of their day? He had them trampled under
the feet of elephants, but the leprosy broke out on his body the very
next day. When Mudhaji Sindhia caused seventy Thugs to be executed at
Mathura was he not warned in a dream by Devi that he should release
them? And did he not the very day after their execution begin to
spit blood? And did he not die within three months?" Their subsequent
misfortunes and the success of the British officers against them they
attributed to their disobedience of the ordinances of Devi in slaying
women and other classes of prohibited persons and their disregard of
her omens. They also held that the spirits of all their victims went
straight to Paradise, and this was the reason why the Thugs were not
troubled by them as other murderers were.

13. Theory of Thuggee as a religious sect

The fact that the Thugs considered themselves to be directed by
the deity, reinforced by their numerous superstitious beliefs and
observances, has led to the suggestion by one writer that they were
originally a religious sect, whose principal tenet was the prohibition
of the shedding of blood. There is, however, no evidence in support
of this view in the accounts of Colonel Sleeman, incomparably the
best authority. Their method of strangulation was, as has been seen,
simply the safest and most convenient means of murder: it enabled
them to dispense with arms, by the sight of which the apprehensions
of their victims would have been aroused, and left no traces on the
site of the crime to be observed by other travellers. On occasion
also they did not scruple to employ weapons; as in the murder of seven
treasure-bearers near Hindoria in Damoh, who would not probably have
allowed the Thugs to approach them, and in consequence were openly
attacked and killed with swords. [700] Other instances are given in
Colonel Sleeman's narrative, and they were also accustomed to cut
and slash about the bodies of their victims after death. The belief
that they were guided by the divine will may probably have arisen as
a means of excusing their own misdeeds to themselves and allaying
their fear of such retribution as being haunted by the ghosts of
their victims. Similar instances of religious beliefs and practices
are given in the accounts of other criminals, such as the Badhaks and
Sansias. And the more strict and serious observances of the Thugs may
be accounted for by the more atrocious character of their crimes and
the more urgent necessity of finding some palliative.

The veneration paid to the pickaxe, which will shortly be described,
merely arises from the common animistic belief that tools and
implements generally achieve the results obtained from them by their
inherent virtue and of their own volition, and not from the human hand
which guides them and the human brain which fashioned them to serve
their ends. Members of practically all castes worship the implements
of their profession and thus afford evidence of the same belief,
the most familiar instance of which is perhaps, 'The pestilence
that walketh in the darkness and the arrow that flieth by noonday';
where the writer intended no metaphor but actually thought that the
pestilence walked and the arrow flew of their own volition.

14. Worship of Kali

Kali or Bhawani was the principal deity of the Thugs, as of most of
the criminal and lower castes; and those who were Muhammadans got
over the difficulty of her being a Hindu goddess by pretending that
Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, was an incarnation of her. In
former times they held that the goddess was accustomed to relieve
them of the trouble of destroying the dead bodies by devouring them
herself; but in order that they might not see her doing this she had
strictly enjoined on them never to look back on leaving the site of
a murder. On one occasion a novice of the fraternity disobeyed this
rule and, unguardedly looking behind him, saw the goddess in the
act of feasting upon a body with the half of it hanging out of her
mouth. Upon this she declared that she would no longer devour those
whom the Thugs slaughtered; but she agreed to present them with one
of her teeth for a pickaxe, a rib for a knife and the hem of her lower
garment for a noose, and ordered them for the future to cut about and
bury the bodies of those whom they destroyed. As there seems reason
to suppose that the goddess Kali represents the deified tiger, on
which she rides, she was eminently appropriate as the patroness of
the Thugs and in the capacity of the devourer of corpses.

15. The sacred pickaxe

When the sacred pickaxe used for burying corpses had to be made, the
leader of the gang, having ascertained a lucky day from the priest,
went to a blacksmith and after closing the door so that no other
person might enter, got him to make the axe in his presence without
touching any other work until it was completed. A day was then chosen
for the consecration of the pickaxe, either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
or Friday; and the ceremony was performed inside a house or tent,
so that the shadow of no living thing might fall on and contaminate
the sacred implement. A pit was dug in the ground and over it the
pickaxe was washed successively with water, sugar and water, sour
milk, and alcoholic liquor, all of which were poured over it into
the pit. Finally it was marked seven times with vermilion. A burnt
offering was then made with all the usual ingredients for sacrifice
and the pickaxe was passed seven times through the flames. A cocoanut
was placed on the ground, and the priest, holding the pickaxe by the
point in his right hand, said, 'Shall I strike?' The others replied
yes, and striking the cocoanut with the butt end he broke it in
pieces, upon which all exclaimed, 'All hail, Devi, and prosper the
Thugs.' All then partook of the kernel of the cocoanut, and collecting
the fragments put them into the pit so that they might not afterwards
be contaminated by the touch of any man's foot. Here the cocoanut
may probably be considered as a substituted sacrifice for a human
being. Thereafter the pickaxe was called Kassi or Mahi instead of
_kudali_ the ordinary name, and was given to the shrewdest, cleanest
and most sober and careful man of the party, who carried it in his
waist-belt. While in camp he buried it in a secure place with its
point in the direction they intended to go; and they believed that
if another direction was better the point would be found changed
towards it. They said that formerly the pickaxe was thrown into a
well and would come up of itself when summoned with due ceremonies;
but since they disregarded the ordinances of Kali it had lost that
virtue. Many Thugs told Colonel Sleeman [701] that they had seen the
pickaxe rise out of the well in the morning of its own accord and
come to the hands of the man who carried it; and even the several
pickaxes of different gangs had been known to come up of themselves
from the same well and go to their respective bearers. The pickaxe
was also worshipped on every seventh day during an expedition,
and it was believed that the sound made by it in digging a grave
was never heard by any one but a Thug. The oath by the pickaxe was
in their esteem far more sacred than that by the Ganges water or the
Koran, and they believed that a man who perjured himself by this oath
would die or suffer some great calamity within six days. In prison,
when administering an oath to each other in cases of dispute, they
sometimes made an image of the pickaxe out of a piece of cloth and
consecrated it for the purpose. If the pickaxe at any time fell from
the hands of the carrier it was a dreadful omen and portended either
that he would be killed that year or that the gang would suffer some
grievous misfortune. He was deprived of his office and the gang either
returned home or chose a fresh route and consecrated the pickaxe anew.