“They had murdered the gooroo (or chief priest) of the Holcar family and his followers; and their leader taking a liking to a parrot of his, had brought it with them.
“On arriving at Indore the parrot began to talk, and was almost immediately recognized by one of Holcar’s family as the parrot of the gooroo who had gone off for Ojeya some days before. One of the youngest of them was immediately tied up and flogged, and after a couple of dozen, he confessed the robbery and murder. The bodies were taken up and recognized, and five-and-forty Thugs were blown off at once from the mouths of cannon. He was one of the five who were pardoned on account of their youth, and taken into service.
“The handle of the kodalee is made and put on when it is required, and thrown away the moment the work is done, so that it forms no essential part of the consecrated instrument.
“The investiture of the roomal (or handkerchief) is the next religious ceremony performed. No man can strangle until he has been regularly invested by the priest with the cloth with which it is performed. Cords and nooses are no longer used. A common handkerchief or cummerbund is all that men north of the Nurbudda will now use, though it is said, that in some parts of the Peninsula the cord and noose are still in use, owing to the Thugs there being less liable to be searched.
“After a man has passed through the different grades, and shown that he has sufficient dexterity, nerve, and resolution, which they call ‘hard breastedness,’ to strangle a victim himself, the priest, before all the gang assembled on a certain day, presents him with the roomal, and tells him how many of his family have signalized themselves by the use of it, how much his friends expect from his courage and conduct, and implores the goddess to vouchsafe her support to his laudable ambition and endeavours to distinguish himself in her service.
“The investiture of the roomal is knighthood to these monsters; it is the highest object of their ambition, not only because the man who strangles has so much a head over and above the share which falls to him in the division of the spoil, but because it implies the recognition, by his comrades, of the qualities of courage, strength, and dexterity, which all are anxious to be famed for.
“The ceremony costs the candidate about forty rupees; and is performed by a gooroo, or high priest of the gang, who is commonly an old Thug, no matter whether Musulmān or Hindoo, who has retired from service, and lives upon the contributions of his descendants and disciples, who look up to him with great reverence for advice and instruction, and refer to his decision all cases of doubt and dispute amongst themselves.
“Many attain this degree of knighthood before the age of twenty, having been taken out by their masters when young, and early accustomed to assist by holding the hands of the victims while the roomal-bearers strangle them; and a man must show good evidence of the ‘kura chatee,’ or hard breast, before he is admitted even to this office; some men never attain to this honour, particularly those who have adopted the profession late in life, and remain all their lives as decoys, watchmen, grave-diggers, and removers of bodies. An attempt has been made, and with some success, to impress Thugs with the belief that the souls of their victims attain paradise, as in the case of other human victims, offered in sacrifice to this goddess, and become the tutelar saints of those who strangle them.
“This is, however, somewhat at variance with their notion, that the spirits of those who have been buried with the consecrated pickaxe can never rise from their graves; but it reminds me of an opinion that prevails amongst the people in wild and mountainous parts of India, that the spirit of a man destroyed by a tiger, sometimes rides upon his head and guides him from his pursuers.