“The person invested with the roomal has long used it in play before the practised eye of his gooroo, and has been long accustomed to see others use it in earnest; but it is still thought necessary to select for him easy victims at first, and they do not employ him indiscriminately, like the others, until he has shown his powers in the death of two or three travellers of feeble form and timid bearing. The maxim that ‘dead men tell no tales’ is invariably acted upon by these people, and they never rob a man until they have murdered him.
“In the territories of the native chiefs of Bundelcund, and those of Scindia and Holcar, a Thug feels just as independent and free as an Englishman in a tavern, and they will probably begin to feel themselves just as much so in those of Nagpore, now that European superintendency has been withdrawn. But they are not confined to the territories of the native chiefs; they are becoming numerous in our own, and are often found most securely and comfortably situated in the very seats of our principal judicial establishments; and of late years they are known to have formed some settlements to the east of the Ganges, in parts that they formerly used merely to visit in the course of their annual excursions.
“I should mention that the cow being a form of Doorga, or Bhawānī, the Mahomedans must forego the use of beef the moment they enlist themselves under her banners; and though they may read their khoran, they are not suffered to invoke the name of Mahommed.
“The khoran is still their civil code, and they are governed by its laws in all matters of inheritance, marriage, &c.
“Your obedient servant,
“H.[62]”
I have been greatly interested in the above account: there are numerous Thugs in and around Cawnpore; they never attack Europeans; but the natives are afraid of travelling alone, as a poor bearer with one month’s wages of four rupees has quite sufficient to attract them. They seldom bury them in these parts, but having strangled and robbed their victim, they throw him down a well, wells being numerous by the side of the high roads.
In 1844, I visited the famous temple of Bhawānī at Bindachun, near Mirzapore. See the portrait of the Devi, entitled “[Bhagwan];” and the sketch of the “[Temple of Bhawānī],” in the Second Volume.