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Such is a row amongst these untutored children of The Desert. How different to the Thuggee rows now being enacted in Ireland! Afterwards paid a visit to Bel Kasem. He complained bitterly of slaves being dear. A slave is sold at from 40 to 100 dollars. The mediate price is 60 to 70. Two months ago good slaves were sold at 30 and 40 dollars each.
The terrible Indian goddess whose devotees were impelled to commit in her name the awful crimes of Thuggee the ghastly Kâlî, worshipped even to this day with rites too abominable to be described might well be a relic of a system which had to be swept away even at the cost of the submergence of a continent, and the loss of sixty-five million human lives. Human Artificials.
"'Who are you? I cried, grasping the man who was holding the other down. "'Uracao, said he. 'Get your pistols or you're lost! "'What the devil is the matter? I cried, angrily, for I had not even yet a suspicion. "'Feel around your neck, said he. "Hastily I put my hand up. A thrill of terror passed through me. It was the Thuggee cord. "'Who is this? I cried, grasping the man who had fallen.
As religiously he educates his children to pursue the same career, instilling into their minds, at the earliest age, that Thuggee is the noblest profession a man can follow, and that the dark goddess they worship will always provide rich travellers for her zealous devotees. The following is the wild and startling legend upon which the Thugs found the divine origin of their sect.
This man might have a feud with Kubar Bux, and peradventure he had merely invented the story of thugs and wholesale murder for the latter's undoing. I know well the wily ways of some men how they will even imperil their own lives to compass the ruin of an enemy. "'If I go with you now, I said, 'to the shop of Kubar Bux, what proof will you give me of his connexion with this story of thuggee?
Does John Footman, when he asks permission to go and spend the evening with some friends, pass his time in thuggee; waylay and strangle an old gentleman, or two; let himself into your house, with the house-key of course, and appear as usual with the shaving-water when you ring your bell in the morning?
By diffusing education among your vassals and dependents, establishing schools, promoting the construction of good roads, and suppressing, with the whole weight of your authority and influence, barbarous usages and crimes, such as infanticide, suttee, thuggee, and dacoitee, you may, Princes and Chiefs, effectually second these endeavours of the British Government, and secure for yourselves and your people a full share of the benefits which the measures to which I have alluded are calculated to confer upon you.
The caste of Thuggee, which was at war with all other castes, and especially at war with the English, evaded it by stimulating on the fingers of their male children the formation of these artificial ridges. It became a sacred rite, performed by the priests, and has been maintained by the more devout members of the caste, although the need for it has ceased." Sylvester looked at the prints again.
There were thousands of Thugs roving over India constantly, during many generations. They made Thuggee a hereditary vocation and taught it to their sons and to their son's sons. Boys were in full membership as early as 16 years of age; veterans were still at work at 70. What was the fascination, what was the impulse?
A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma; so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak of thuggee on slightly improved lines! I had suspected something of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon. My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope. You have seen how it was fastened about my throat? That was unscientific.
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