Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 7.djvu/97

 NOOR KHAN. (361)

HIS man is a prisoner for life and approver in the jail at Jubbulpoor. He is a native of the district of Baragaon, in Gualior, and is a Mussulman. His confessions record five cases of Thuggee, in which twenty-one persons were strangled, and booty to the amount of Rs. 15,700 (£1,570) obtained. He was apprehended and tried in 1835, and has been in confinement since then. His age, if he is still living, may be about seventy-eight.

The crime of Thuggee has been so fully illustrated by English writers, that a very brief description of it will suffice here. It is a very ancient practice, for the Thugs recognise bas-reliefs representing it among the ornaments in the Kylas temple of the caves of Ellora, which is probably of the seventh to ninth century of the Christian era: and was existent literally in every part of India at the period of its fortunate discovery by the late Major-General Sleeman. Thuggee was hereditary in certain families, Hindoo as well as Mussulman; and both sects practised it under the same conditions, ceremonies, and superstitious observances, which related to the goddess Bhowanee or Devi, of whom the Thugs are votaries. Thugs had a slang language, by which they could converse and give their orders unknown to their victims. They had officers in each gang, the leader, the persuader, the strangler, the gravedigger, and the scout; and each gang was told off into these positions, and performed their several offices with exactness. The most honourable of these grades were the stranglers, who needed to be bold, resolute, active men, and they received a higher share of booty than the others. When there was no general police throughout India, where an infinite number of petty states existed, and the protection given in all to travellers was of the feeblest description, the practice of Thuggee afforded a large and easy booty. A gang of Thugs appeared like an ordinary company of travellers, enticed similar parties into their company, and murdered them wherever they could; no one missed them, or if they were missed, any clue to their fate was impossible. Nothing could exceed the vigour by which, upon their discovery, the Thugs