Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 4.djvu/121

SANSEEAS. where the banker's money chest was kept. At the time appointed, a chosen band repaired to the appointed station just before the evening lamps were lighted, entered the house, and speared a man who resisted, securing the treasure; while the military sentry in the bazar near the guard house was also speared and killed on the spot, as he turned on his post in the direction of the house attacked. The gang was not disturbed, and got clear off with its booty, travelling rapidly to a place where ponies had been posted for them, and afterwards joining their camp, which was at a distance of forty miles. No one had seen the robbers come, no one had seen them go. They were never traced, and the perpetrators would never have been discovered, but for the confession of their leader.

On another occasion a few Sanseeas, with some others, attacked a rich banker's house at Gudduk, in the Deccan, speared him and his son in their house, and carried off booty to a large amount without alarm in the town. It was only by chance that a trace had been obtained of the actors in this tragedy, of the perpetrators of which no local clue existed, and in regard to whom the local police were utterly at fault. Most of the gang were apprehended, and it was proved that they had gone more than one hundred miles to commit the deed, from a foreign territory, in which they relied upon not being traced. It was no wonder these men were formidable. Foreigners themselves, vagrants, unknown and uncared for, they could arrange and carry out, with perfect success, expeditions such as these, without much chance of detection; and, no doubt, for centuries past, they had exercised their vocation almost "without check. In native states there was no pretence of police. The local authorities were venal, and very readily hushed by a fair proportion of spoil. If, here and there, crimes became unbearable, some one caught red-handed, had hands or feet lopped off, as a warning to others; but such instances were rare. It required the perseverance and intelligence of English officers to get at the root of this hereditary evil, and to crush it out, and much has been effected. The most mischievous leaders of the Sanseeas, and other hereditarily criminal tribes, have been disposed of, and crime has been checked; but the germ of it remains, and it would be taken up by classes like the Sanseeas upon any opportunity. The secret rites of the tribe are still practised, and its traditions, to them glorious, of by-gone affairs, survive among them; opportunity is all that is required for the practice of their hereditary crimes, and if they have become impossible in British territory, who is to check it in native states, or follow classes like the Sanseeas wherever they wander? It is, perhaps, a difficult question for Government to deal with; but it is not impossible that they might be collected and settled as a colony in some locality, instructed, as the Thugs have been, in useful and even profitable arts, and thus reclaimed from pursuits in which they have never known in regard to others, the same instincts of humanity which exist among themselves.