Volume 1

The Thugs or Phansigars of India: comprising a history of the rise and progress of that extraordinary fraternity of assassins. And a description of the system which it pursues, and of the measures which have been adopted by the supreme government of India for its suppression / compiled from original and authentic documents published by Captain W.H. Sleeman.

  • William Henry Sleeman
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Thugs or Phansigars of India: comprising a history of the rise and progress of that extraordinary fraternity of assassins. And a description of the system which it pursues, and of the measures which have been adopted by the supreme government of India for its suppression / compiled from original and authentic documents published by Captain W.H. Sleeman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HISTORY OP THE THUGS OR PHANSIGARS. [The first satisfactory general notice which we find of the Thugs, is contained in the following account from the pen of Doctor Richard C. Sher- wood, Surgeon on the Establishment of Fort St. George. It was written in 1816; and refers to the Thugs as they were found at that time in the southern part of Hindoostan, under the name of Phansigars. The notes which illustrate it were written by Captain Sleeman, with all the advan- tages of his subsequent investigations, personal and historical, in 1816.] While Europeans have journeyed through the extensive territories subject to the Government of Fort St. George, with a degree of security no where surpassed, the path of the native traveller has been beset with perils little known or suspected, into which numbers annually falling, have mysteri- ously disappeared, the victims of villains as subtle, rapacious, and cruel, as any who are to be met with in the records of human depravity. The Phansigars, or stranglers, are thus desig- nated from the Hindustani word 'phansi, a noose. In the more northern parts of India, these mur- 2