Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 5.djvu/54

MUZBEE SIKHS. among them. The operation of the Thuggee department, and the speedy conviction and punishment of the worst offenders, struck terror into the rest, and for many years past no instance of the crime has been known to occur. The Muzbees figured in the Photograph are Thug prisoners, now in confinement for life in the Lahore jail, where they have been taught useful trades, and are more under surveillance than in actual confinement. These, and all other Thug prisoners, have been professional murderers and robbers, and have deserved the punishment of death, but it has been a condition of the commutation of their sentences, that any escape would involve prosecution on the original charges, or execution of the original sentence; and hence few escapes, or relapses into crime, are ever experienced. The Muzbee Sikhs, in general, are a powerful athletic body of men, having no trammels of caste, eating animal food habitually, and drinking freely of ardent spirits. Polygamy is not much practised among them, and their women work as hard as their husbands. They have no particular costume or language, both being what is current in their country: the men wear a simple tunic, turban, and loose baggy drawers; the women the petticoat, bodice, and scarf, chiefly of coarse material.