Murder a religious rite--Consulting the omens--The sacred pickaxe or “kussee”--The “goor” or consecrated sugar--Certain castes under the protection of the goddess Bhowanee spared--Women seldom killed--Belief of Thugs that the neglect of omens and murder of women were the causes of arrest and downfall--The apprenticeship of a young member to the practices of Thuggee.
When and how Thuggee began may not be definitely known, but it is certain that its votaries always attributed a divine origin to the practice. They esteemed the wholesale taking of life to which they were vowed a pious act, performed under the immediate orders and protection of the Hindu goddess, indifferently called Devee or Durga, Kali or Bhowanee. Murder was in fact a religious rite, the victim being a sacrifice to the deity. The strangler was troubled with no remorse; on the contrary, he gloried in his deed as the pious act of a devout worshipper. He prepared his murders without misgiving, perpetrated them without emotions of pity, and looked back upon them with satisfaction, not regret.
The Thugs gave free vent to some of the worst passions of perverse humanity; they were treacherous, underhanded, pitiless to those they deemed their legitimate prey. But yet they were seldom guilty of wanton cruelty; the pain they inflicted was only that caused by depriving a human being of life. It was a rule with them never to murder women, and they generally spared infant children whom they adopted, bringing them up in their traditions. Even if a woman was doomed to suffer she was most scrupulously preserved from insult beforehand, either by act or word. In private life they were patterns of domestic virtue, affectionate to their own families, fond of their homes; well conducted, law abiding subjects of the state that gave them shelter.
For two centuries at least Thuggee flourished with rank luxuriance in India, a soil exactly suited to its growth, fostered by the bigoted adherence to its tenets and a firm faith in the rewards vouchsafed to close observance of its rites and ceremonies. The Thugs were noted formalists in the performance of their dread business. When they went out to kill, they were governed by the strictest rules of procedure, and steadfastly believed that the breach of any, even the smallest, would entail discomfiture and misfortune. They gave the most unlimited credence to superstitions, followed omens blindly and implicitly, and undertook nothing without consulting their pundits, or wise men versed in precedent and traditionary lore. No Thug, Sleeman tells us, who had been fully initiated in the mysteries, doubted the inspiration of the pickaxe (the sacred emblem in the faith of Thuggee), when consecrated in due form, or doubted that the omens sought and observed were all-sufficient to guide them to their prey or warn them from their danger. They were satisfied that only by the neglect of these and the careless worship rendered to the goddess could the suppression of Thuggee have become possible to the British government.