Confessions of a Thug

by Meadows Taylor

  Produced by Moti Ben-Ari and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book wasproduced from a file downloaded from the British Library)

  CONFESSIONS OF A THUG.

  BY CAPTAIN MEADOWS TAYLOR, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF NORTH BERAR.

  I have heard, have read bold fables of enormity, Devised to make men wonder, but this hardness Transcends all fiction. LAW OF LOMBARDY.

 

  LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1858.

  PREFACE.

  As nearly twenty years have elapsed since the original publicationof this Work, a revised edition might, but for the present absorbinginterest of Indian affairs, be considered unnecessary.

  On its first appearance--received as an exciting romance--thegenerality of readers little knew how much of melancholy and revoltingtruth lay beneath the surface. At the present time it may deserve amore attentive study; recent events will have too well prepared theReader's mind for implicit belief in all the systematic atrocitiesnarrated: they are true, and most of them found their first recordin legal and official documents brought under the notice of CaptainTaylor, who from an early age possessed the rare advantage of longstudy and intimate knowledge of the languages, manners, and customsof the natives, Mahomedans as well as Hindoo. In fact, it may safelybe affirmed, that the Reader will find no characters introduced, noscenes delineated, nor customs and manners of the East described, whichhave not been faithfully drawn from objects with which the writer wasperfectly familiar.

  It will scarcely fail to be remarked, with what consummate art suchnumerous bodies of men were organized, and for a long time keptabsolutely unknown, while committing acts of cruelty and rapine hardlyconceivable; countenanced too, and secretly supported, by men inauthority, and even by Priests, Brahmins, and Fakeers, eager to sharein their unhallowed gains.

  The Reader is particularly requested to peruse Captain Taylor'sIntroduction, as affording a valuable key to the subsequent narrative.It may also furnish some clue to the successful concealment of arebellion, in the existence of which many of our oldest and mostexperienced officers, and men high in authority, absolutely withheldbelief, till too late and too cruelly convinced of their fatal error.Whatever can help us to arrive at a full and precise knowledge of thecauses and the extent of this singular conspiracy, which must haveresulted in the destruction of our Eastern Empire, had it not beenupheld by constancy and heroism yet more extraordinary, is of theutmost value, and merits a deeper interest and more serious attentionthan any romance can claim.

  P. M. T.

  INTRODUCTION.

  The tale of crime which forms the subject of the following pages is,alas! almost all true; what there is of fiction has been suppliedonly to connect the events, and make the adventures of Ameer Ali asinteresting as the nature of his horrible profession would permit me.

  I became acquainted with this person in 1832. He was one of theapprovers or informers who were sent to the Nizam's territories fromSaugor, and whose appalling disclosures caused an excitement in thecountry which can never be forgotten. I have listened to them withfearful interest, such as I can scarcely hope to excite in the minds ofmy readers; and I can only add, in corroboration of the ensuing story,that, by his own confessions, which were in every particular confirmedby those of his brother informers, and are upon official record, he hadbeen directly concerned in the murder of seven hundred and nineteenpersons. He once said to me, "Ah! Sir, if I had not been in prisontwelve years, the number would have been a thousand!"

  How the system of Thuggee could have become so prevalent, unknown toand unsuspected by the people of India, among whom the professorsof it were living in constant association, must, to the majority ofthe English public not conversant with the peculiar construction ofOriental society, be a subject of extreme wonder. It will be difficultto make this understood within my present limits, and yet it is sonecessary that I cannot pass it by.

  In a vast continent like India, which from the earliest periods hasbeen portioned out into territories, the possessions of many princesand chieftains, each with supreme and irresponsible power in hisown dominions, having most lax and inefficient governments, and atenmity with or jealous of all his neighbours, it may be conceived thatno security could exist for the traveller upon the principal roadsthroughout the continent; no general league was ever entered into forhis security; nor could any government, however vigorous, or system ofpolice, however vigilant it might be in one state, possibly extend toall.

  When it is also considered that no public conveyances have ever existedin India (the want of roads, and the habits and customs of the nativesbeing alike opposed to their use)--that journeys, however long, haveto be undertaken on foot or on horseback--that parties, previouslyunknown to each other, associate together for mutual security andcompanionship--that even the principal roads (except those constructedfor military purposes by the Company's government) are only tracksmade by the constant passage of people over them, often intersectingforests, jungles, and mountainous and uncultivated tracts, where thereare but few villages and a scanty population--and that there arenever any habitations between the different villages, which are oftensome miles apart,--it will readily be allowed, that every temptationand opportunity exists for plunderers of all descriptions to maketravellers their prey. Accordingly freebooters have always existed,under many denominations, employing various modes of operation toattain their ends; some effecting them by open and violent attacks withweapons, others by petty thefts and by means of disguises. Beyond all,however, the Thugs have of late years been discovered to be the mostnumerous, the most united, the most secret in their horrible work, andconsequently the most dangerous and destructive.

  Travellers seldom hold any communication with the towns through whichthey pass, more than for the purchase of the day's provisions: theysometimes enter them, but pitch their tents or lie under the treeswhich surround them; to gain any intelligence of a person's progressfrom village to village is therefore almost impossible. The greatestfacilities of disguise among thieves and Thugs exist in the endlessdivisions of the people into tribes, castes, and professions; andremittances to an immense amount are known to be constantly made fromone part of the country to another in gold and silver, to save therate of exchange; jewels also and precious stones are often sent todistant parts, under the charge of persons who purposely assume amean and wretched appearance, and every one is obliged to carry moneyupon his person for the daily expenses of travelling. It is also nextto impossible to conceal anything carried, from the unlimited powerof search possessed by the officers of customs in the territories ofnative princes, or to guard against the information their subordinatesmay supply to Thugs, or robbers of any description.

  It has been ascertained, by recent investigation, that in every partof India many of the hereditary landholders and the chief officersof villages have had private connexion with Thugs for generations,affording them facilities for murder by allowing their atrocious actsto pass with impunity, and sheltering the offenders when in danger;whilst in return for these services they received portions of theirgains, or laid a tax upon their houses, which the Thugs cheerfullypaid. To almost every village (and at towns they are in a greaterproportion) several hermits, Fakeers, and religious mendicants haveattached themselves. The huts and houses of these people, which areoutside the walls, and always surrounded by a grove or a garden, haveafforded the Thugs places of rendezvous or concealment; while theFakeers, under their sanctimonious garb, have enticed travellers totheir gardens by the apparently disinterested offers of shade and goodwater. The facilities I have enumerated, and hundreds of others whichwould be almost unintelligible by description, but which are intimatelyconnected with, and grow out of,
the habits of the people, have causedThuggee to be everywhere spread and practised throughout India.

  The origin of Thuggee is entirely lost in fable and obscurity. ColonelSleeman conjectures that it owed its existence to the vagrant tribesof Mahomedans which continued to plunder the country long after theinvasion of India by the Moghuls and Tartars. The Hindoos claim for ita divine origin in their goddess Bhowanee; and certainly the fact thatboth Mahomedans and Hindoos believe in her power, and observe Hindeeceremonies, would go far to prove that the practice of Thuggee was ofHindoo origin. Though very remote traditions of it exist, there areno records of its having been discovered in any of the histories ofIndia until the reign of Akbur, when many of its votaries were seizedand put to death. From that time till 1810, although native princesnow and then discovered and executed the perpetrators,--I believe itwas unknown to the British government or authorities. In that year thedisappearance of many men of the army, proceeding to and from theirhomes, induced the Commander-in-Chief to issue an order warning thesoldiers against Thugs. In 1812, after the murder by Thugs of Lieut.Monsell, Mr. Halhed, accompanied by a strong detachment, proceeded tothe village where the murderers were known to reside, and was resisted.The Thugs were discovered to be occupying many villages in thepergunnahs of Sindouse, and to have paid, for generations, large sumsannually to Sindia's Government for protection. At this time it wascomputed that upwards of nine hundred were in those villages alone. Theresistance offered by the Thugs to Mr. Halhed's detachment caused theirultimate dispersion, and no doubt they carried the practice of theirprofession into distant parts of the country, where perhaps it had beenunknown before.

  It appears strange, that as early as 1816 no measures for thesuppression of Thuggee were adopted; for that the practices of theThugs were well known, we have the strongest evidence in a paperwritten by Doctor Sherwood, which appeared in the "Literary Journal"of Madras, and which is admirably correct in the description of theceremonies and practice of the Thugs of Southern India. One wouldsuppose that they were then considered too monstrous for belief,and were discredited or unnoticed; but it is certain that from thattime up to 1830, in almost every part of India, but particularly inBundelkund and Western Malwa, large gangs of Thugs were apprehendedby Major Borthwick, and Captains Wardlow and Henley. Many were triedand executed for the murder of travellers, but without exciting morethan a passing share of public attention. No blow was ever aimed at the_system_, if indeed its complete and extensive organization was eversuspected, or, if suspected, believed.

  In that year however, and for some years previously, Thuggee seemedto have reached a fearful height of audacity, and the governmentcould no longer remain indifferent to an evil of such enormousand increasing magnitude. The attention of several distinguishedcivil officers--Messrs. Stockwell, Smith, Wilkinson, Borthwick, andothers,--had become attracted with great interest to the subject. Someof the Thugs who had been seized were allowed life on the condition ofdenouncing their associates, and among others Feringhea, a leader ofgreat notoriety.

  The appalling disclosures of this man, so utterly unexpected byCaptain (now Colonel) Sleeman, the political agent in the provincesbordering upon the Nerbudda river, were almost discredited by that ableofficer; but by the exhumation in the very grove where he happenedto be encamped of no less than thirteen bodies in various states ofdecay,--and the offer being made to him of opening other graves in andnear the same spot,--the approver's tale was too surely confirmed; hisinformation was acted upon, and large gangs, which had assembled inRajpootana for the purpose of going out on Thuggee, were apprehendedand brought to trial.

  From this period, the system for the suppression of Thuggee may besaid to have commenced in earnest; from almost every gang one ormore informers were admitted; and when they found that their onlychance of life lay in giving correct information, they unequivocallydenounced their associates, and their statements were confirmed by thedisinterment of their victims in the spots pointed out.

  In this manner Thuggee was found to be in active practice all overIndia. The knowledge of its existence was at first confined to thecentral provinces, but as men were apprehended from a distance, theygave information of others beyond them in the almost daily commissionof murder: the circle gradually widened till it spread over the wholecontinent--and from the foot of the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, fromCutch to Assam, there was hardly a province in the whole of India whereThuggee had not been practised--where the statements of the informerswere not confirmed by the disinterment of the dead!

  Few who were in India at that period (1831-32) will ever forget theexcitement which the discovery occasioned in every part of the country:it was utterly discredited by the magistrates of many districts, whocould not be brought to believe that this silently destructive systemcould have worked without their knowledge. I quote the followingpassage from Colonel Sleeman's introduction to his own most curious andable work:--

  "While I was in civil charge of the district of Nursingpoor, in thevalley of the Nerbudda, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824, no ordinaryrobbery or theft could be committed without my becoming acquaintedwith it, nor was there a robber or thief of the ordinary kind in thedistrict, with whose character I had not become acquainted in thedischarge of my duty as a magistrate; and if any man had then toldme that a gang of assassins by profession resided in the village ofKundelee, not four hundred yards from my court, and that the extensivegroves of the village of Mundesur, only one stage from me on the roadto Saugor and Bhopal, was one of the greatest bhils, or places ofmurder, in all India; that large gangs from Hindostan and the Dukhunused to rendezvous in these groves, remain in them for days togetherevery year, and carry on their dreadful trade all along the lines ofroad that pass by and branch off from them, with the knowledge andconnivance of the two landholders by whose ancestors these groves hadbeen planted, I should have thought him a fool or a madman; and yetnothing could have been more true; the bodies of a _hundred travellers_lie buried in and among the groves of Mundesur, and a gang of assassinslived in and about the village of Kundelee, while I was magistrate ofthe district, and extended their depredations to the cities of Poonaand Hyderabad."

  Similar to the preceding, as showing the daring character of theThuggee operations, was the fact, that at the cantonment of Hingolee,the leader of the Thugs of that district, Hurree Singh, was arespectable merchant of the place, one with whom I myself, in commonwith many others, have had dealings. On one occasion he applied to theofficer in civil charge of the district, Captain Reynolds, for a passto bring some _cloths_ from Bombay, which he knew were on their wayaccompanied by their owner, a merchant of a town not far from Hingolee:he murdered this person, his attendants, and cattle-drivers, broughtthe merchandise up to Hingolee under the pass he had obtained, and soldit openly in the cantonment; nor would this have ever been discovered,had he not confessed it after his apprehension, and gloried in it asa good joke. By this man too and his gang many persons were murdered_in the very bazar of the cantonment_, within one hundred yards of themain guard, and were buried hardly five hundred yards from the lineof sentries! I was myself present at the opening of several of theseunblessed graves, (each containing several bodies,) which were pointedout by the approvers, one by one, in the coolest manner, to thosewho were assembled, till we were sickened and gave up further searchin disgust. The place was the dry channel of a small watercourse,communicating with the river, not broader or deeper than a ditch;it was close to the road to a neighbouring village, one of the mainoutlets from the cantonment to the country.

  Once awakened to the necessity of suppressing, by the most vigorousmeasures, the dreadful system only just detected in its operation,the officers who were first appointed to investigate the reports andaccusations of the informers, used their utmost efforts to arouse inthe Supreme Government a corresponding interest, and happily succeeded.The matter was taken up most warmly by the Governor-General, LordWilliam Bentinck, and the Supreme Council; and highly intelligentofficers were appointed to superintend the exe
cution of measures inthose districts where Thuggee was discovered to be in practice. Most ofthe native princes gave up claims upon such of their subjects as shouldbe apprehended upon charges of Thuggee, or who should be denounced bythe informers; and although in many parts the landholders and Potailsof villages protected the Thugs, and resisted their apprehension, yetthe plans for the suppression of the system were eminently successful.As suspicion was aroused, no body of men could traverse the countryin any direction without being subject to the strictest scrutiny bythe police, and by informers who were stationed with them upon all thegreat thoroughfares and in the principal towns.

  The success of these measures will be more evident from the followingtable, which was kindly supplied to me by Captain Reynolds, the generalsuperintendent of the department.

  From 1831 to 1837, inclusive, there were:--

  Transported to Penang, &c. 1,059 Hanged 412 Imprisoned for life with hard labour 87 Imprisoned in default of security 21 Imprisoned for various periods 69 Released after trial 32 Escaped from jail 11 Died in jail 36 ----- 1,727 Made approvers 483 Convicted but not sentenced 120 In jail in various parts not yet tried 936 ----- 3,266

  Added to the above, Captain Reynolds mentioned that, at the time hewrote, upwards of 1,800 notorious Thugs were at large in various partsof India, whose names were known; how many besides existed, it isimpossible to conjecture.

  How enormous therefore must have been the destruction of humanlife and property in India before Thuggee was known to exist orwas only partially checked! How many thousands must annually haveperished by the hands of these remorseless assassins! Awful indeedis the contemplation; for, during the whole of the troublous timesof the Mahratta and Pindharee wars, their trade flourished; norwas it till 1831 that their wholesale system of murder receivedany serious check: and after its general discovery, the countlessand affecting applications from families to the officers of thedepartment to endeavour to procure them some knowledge of the placeswhere their missing relatives had been destroyed, that they mighthave the miserable satisfaction of performing the ceremonies for thedead--showed how deeply the evil had affected society.

  And not only as described in the following pages has Thuggee existed:since they were written, it has been discovered under several otherforms and been found to be extensively practised on the Ganges by menwho live in boats, and murder those passengers whom they are able toentice into their company in their voyages up and down the river. Butthe most refined in guilt are those who murder parents for the sake oftheir children, to sell them as household slaves, or to dancing women,to be brought up to prostitution.

  Throughout the whole of India, including all territories of nativeprinces, only eighteen officers are employed as superintendentsand agents for the suppression of Thuggee; many of whom, besidesthe labour of this office, which is excessive, have other civiland political duties to fulfil. By a reference to any map, it willat once be seen what enormous provinces or divisions of India fallto the superintendence of each person. Whether it is possible foreach to extend to every part of that under his charge the extremeattention and scrutiny which are so imperatively necessary to put anend to this destructive system (for there is no doubt that whereverone well-initiated Thug exists, he will among the idle and dissolutecharacters which everywhere abound in the Indian population, findnumbers to join him), must be best known to the Government of India. Itis only sincerely to be hoped that _economical_ considerations do notprevent the appointment of others, if necessary.

  The confessions I have recorded are not published to gratify a morbidtaste in any one for tales of horror and of crime; they were written toexpose, as fully as I was able, the practices of the Thugs, and to makethe public of England more conversant with the subject than they canbe at present, notwithstanding that some notice has been attracted tothe subject by an able article in the "Edinburgh Review" upon ColonelSleeman's valuable and interesting work.

  I hope, however, that the form of the present work may be found moreattractive and more generally interesting than an account of thesuperstitions and customs only of the Thugs; while for the accuracyof the pictures of the manners and habits of the natives, and thedescriptions of places and scenes, I can only pledge the experienceof fifteen years' residence in India, and a constant and intimateassociation with its inhabitants.

  If this volume in any way contribute to awaken public vigilance inthe suppression of Thuggee, or if from the perusal of it, any one inauthority rises with a determination to lend his exertions in this goodcause of humanity, my time will not have been occupied in vain.

  LONDON, _July, 1839_.

  M. T.

  CONFESSIONS OF A THUG.