Rambles and recollections of an Indian official!
Major-General Sir W. H. Sleeman, K.C.B.
Supplementary notes by the Editor
Captain J. L. Sleeman, who had intended to contribute an account in some detail of his grandfather's operations for the suppression of Thuggee, has been ordered on active service, and consequently has been unable to write more than the short note printed above.
The editor thinks it desirable to supplement Captain Sleeman's observations by certain additional remarks.
The earliest historical notice of Thuggee appears to be the statement in the History of Fīrōz Shāh Tughlak (1351-88) by a contemporary author that at some time or other in the reign of that sovereign about one thousand Thugs were arrested in Delhi, on the denunciation of an informer.
The Sultan, with misplaced clemency, refused to sanction the execution of any of the prisoners, whom he shipped off to Lakhnauti or Gaur in Bengal, where they were let loose. (Elliot and Dowson, Hist. of India, iii. 141.) That absurd proceeding may well have been the origin of the system of river Thuggee in Bengal, which possibly may be still practised.
The next mention of Thugs refers to the reign of Akbar (1556- 1605). Both Meadows Taylor and Balfour affirm that many Thugs were then executed, and according to Balfour, they numbered five hundred and belonged to the Etawah District, I have not succeeded in finding any mention of the fact in the histories of Akbar—the memory of the event may be preserved only by oral tradition. Etawah, between the Ganges and Jumna, in the province of Agra, has always been notorious for Thuggee and cognate crime.
In the year 1666, towards the close of Shahjahān's reign, the traveller de Thevenot noted that the road between Delhi and Agra was infested by Thugs. His words are:
'The cunningest Robbers in the World are in that Countrey. They use a certain slip with a running-noose, which they can cast with so much slight about a Man's Neck, when they are within reach of him, that they never fail; so that they strangle him in a trice.' (English transl., 1686, Part III, p. 41.)
After the capture of Seringapatam in 1799 the attention of the Company's government was drawn to the prevalence of Thuggee. In 1810 the bodies of thirty victims were found in wells between the Ganges and Jumna, and in 1816 Dr. Sherwood published a paper entitled 'On the Murderers called Phānsigars', sc. 'stranglers', in the Madras Journal of Literature and Science, which was reprinted in Asiatic Researches, vol. xiii (1820).
Various officers then made unsystematic efforts to suppress the stranglers, but effectual operations were deferred until 1829. During the years 1881 and 1832 the existence of the Thug organization became generally known, and intense excitement was aroused throughout India.
The Konkan, or narrow strip of lowlands between the Western Ghāts and the sea, was the only region in the empire not infested by the Thugs. (See H. H. Wilson in supplement to Mill, Hist. of British India, ed. 1858, vol. ix, p. 213; Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India, 3rd ed., 1885, s.v. Thug; and Crooke, Things Indian, Murray, 1906, s.v. Thuggee.)
The records summarized above prove that the Thug organization existed continuously on a large scale from the early part of the fourteenth century until Sir William Sleeman's time, that is to say, for more than five centuries.
In all probability its origin was much more ancient, but records are lacking. It is said that a sculpture representing a Thug strangulation exists among the sculptures at Ellora executed in the eighth century. No such sculpture, however, is mentioned in the detailed account of the Ellora caves by Dr. Burgess.
The magnitude of the organization with which Sleeman grappled is indicated by the following figures.
During the years 1831-7 3,266 Thugs were disposed of one way or another, of whom 412 were hanged, and 483 were admitted as approvers.
Amīr Alī, whose confessions are recorded in Meadows Taylor's fascinating book, The Confessions of a Thug, written in 1837 and first published in 1839, proudly admitted having taken part in the murders of 719 persons, and regretted that an interruption of his career by twelve years' imprisonment in Oudh had prevented him from completing a full thousand of victims. He regarded his profession as affording sport of the most exciting kind possible.
V. A. S.
Notes:
1. Pronounced 'T'ug', a hard cerebral t, with some aspiration.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
EDITOR'S PREFACES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER 1
Annual Fairs held on the Banks of Sacred Streams in India
CHAPTER 2
Hindoo System of Religion
CHAPTER 3
Legend of the Nerbudda River
CHAPTER 4
A Suttee on the Nerbudda
CHAPTER 5
Marriages of Trees—The Tank and the Plantain—Meteors—Rainbows
CHAPTER 6
Hindoo Marriages
CHAPTER 7
The Purveyance System
CHAPTER 8
Religious Sects—Self-government of the Castes—Chimneysweepers—Washerwomen —Elephant Drivers
CHAPTER 9
The Great Iconoclast—Troops routed by Hornets—The Rānī of Garhā—Hornets' Nests in India
CHAPTER 10
The Peasantry and the Land Settlement
CHAPTER 11
Witchcraft
CHAPTER 12
The Silver Tree, or 'Kalpa Briksha'—The 'Singhāra', or Trapa bispinosa, and the Guinea-Worm
CHAPTER 13
Thugs and Poisoners
CHAPTER 14
Basaltic Cappings of the Sandstone Hills of Central India—Suspension Bridge—Prospects of the Nerbudda Valley—Deification of a Mortal
CHAPTER 15
Legend of the Sāgar Lake—Paralysis from eating the Grain of the Lathyrus sativus
CHAPTER 16
Suttee Tombs—Insalubrity of deserted Fortresses
CHAPTER 17
Basaltic Cappings—Interview with a Native Chief—A Singular Character
CHAPTER 18
Birds' Nests—Sports of Boyhood
CHAPTER 19
Feeding Pilgrims—Marriage of a Stone with a Shrub
CHAPTER 20
The Men-Tigers
CHAPTER 21
Burning of Deorī by a Freebooter—A Suttee
CHAPTER 22
Interview with the Rājā who marries the Stone to the Shrub—Order of the Moon and the Fish
CHAPTER 23
The Rājā of Orchhā—Murder of his many Ministers
CHAPTER 24
Corn Dealers—Scarcities—Famines in India
CHAPTER 25
Epidemic Diseases—Scape-goat
CHAPTER 26
Artificial Lakes in Bundēlkhand-Hindoo, Greek, and Roman Faith
CHAPTER 27
Blights
CHAPTER 28
Pestle-and-Mortar Sugar-Mills—Washing away of the Soil
CHAPTER 29
Interview with the Chiefs of Jhānsī—Disputed Succession
CHAPTER 30
Haunted Villages
CHAPTER 31
Interview with the Rājā of Datiyā—Fiscal Errors of Statesmen—Thieves and Robbers by Profession
CHAPTER 32
Sporting at Datiyā—Fidelity of Followers to their Chiefs in India—Law of Primogeniture wanting among Muhammadans
CHAPTER 33
'Bhūmiāwat'
CHAPTER 34
The Suicide-Relations between Parents and Children in India
CHAPTER 35
Gwālior Plain once the Bed of a Lake—Tameness of Peacocks
CHAPTER 36
Gwālior and its Government
CHAPTER 37
Contest for Empire between the Sons of Shah Jahān
CHAPTER 38
Aurangzēb and Murād Defeat their Father's Army near Ujain
CHAPTER 39
Dārā Marches in Person against his Brothers, and is Defeated
CHAPTER 40
Dārā Retreats towards Lahore—Is robbed by the Jāts—Their Character
CHAPTER 41
Shāh Jahān Imprisoned by his Two Sons, Aurangzēb and Murād
CHAPTER 42
Aurangzēb Throws off the Mask, Imprisons his Brother Murād, and Assumes the Government of the Empire
CHAPTER 43
Aurangzēb Meets Shujā in Bengal, and Defeats him, after Pursuing Dārā to the Hyphasis
CHAPTER 44
Aurangzēb Imprisons his Eldest Son—Shujā and all his Family are Destroyed
CHAPTER 45
Second Defeat and Death of Dārā, and Imprisonment of his Two Sons
CHAPTER 46
Death and Character of Amīr Jumla
CHAPTER 47
Reflections on the Preceding History
CHAPTER 48
The Great Diamond of Kohinūr
CHAPTER 49
Pindhārī System—Character of the Marāthā Administration—Cause of their Dislike to the Paramount Power
CHAPTER 50
Dhōlpur, Capital of the Jāt Chiefs of Gohad—Consequence of Obstacles to the Prosecution of Robbers
CHAPTER 51
Influence of Electricity on Vegetation—Agra and its Buildings
CHAPTER 52
Nūr Jahān, the Aunt of the Empress Nūr Mahal, over whose Remains the Tāj is built
CHAPTER 53
Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India—Inability of Europeans to speak Eastern Languages
CHAPTER 54
Fathpur-Sīkrī—The Emperor Akbar's Pilgrimage—Birth of Jahāngīr
CHAPTER 55
Bharatpur—Dīg—Want of Employment for the Military and the Educated Classes under the Company's Rule
CHAPTER 56
Govardhan, the Scene of Kriahna's Dalliance with the Milkmaids
CHAPTER 57
Veracity
CHAPTER 58
Declining Fertility of the Soil—Popular Notion of the Cause
CHAPTER 59
Concentration of Capital and its Effects
CHAPTER 60
Transit Duties in India—Mode of Collecting them
CHAPTER 61
Peasantry of India attached to no existing Government—Want of Trees in Upper India—Cause and Consequence—Wells and Groves
CHAPTER 62
Public Spirit of the Hindoos—Tree Cultivation and Suggestions for extending it
CHAPTER 63
Cities and Towns, formed by Public Establishments, disappear as Sovereigns and Governors change their Abodes
CHAPTER 64
Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawāb Shams-ud- dīn
CHAPTER 65
Marriage of a Jāt Chief
CHAPTER 66
Collegiate Endowment of Muhammadan Tombs and Mosques
CHAPTER 67
The Old City of Delhi
CHAPTER 68
New Delhi, or Shāhjahānābād
CHAPTER 69
Indian Police—Its Defects—and their Cause and Remedy
CHAPTER 70
Rent-free Tenures—Right of Government to Resume such Grants
CHAPTER 71
The Station of Meerut—'Atālīs' who Dance and Sing gratuitously for the Benefit of the Poor
CHAPTER 72
Subdivisions of Lands—Want of Gradations of Rank—Taxes
CHAPTER 73
Meerut-Anglo-Indian Society
CHAPTER 74
Pilgrims of India
CHAPTER 75
The Bēgam Sumroo
CHAPTER 76
ON THE SPIRIT OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE IN THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA
Abolition of Corporal Punishment—Increase of Pay with Length of Service—Promotion by Seniority
CHAPTER 77
Invalid Establishment
Appendix:
Thuggee and the part taken in its Suppression by General Sir W. H. Sleeman, K.C.B., by Captain J. L. Sleeman
Supplementary Note by the Editor
Additions and Corrections
INDEX