‘Thug’ is an oft-used derogatory term, and it turns out the Thuggees of India were actually pretty horrible people.
Scene fromThe Deceivers .
The word “ thug ” has been in the American lexicon for a long time , but the ancestry of the word date well past even the founding of the United States . “ Thug ” finds its root in the Hindi Book “ thag , ” which translates into “ stealer , ” and the Sanskrit word of honor “ sthagati ” , which means to conceal .
The first mention to thugs dates back to the writings ofZiau - d boom Barni , a Muslim political thinker and writer , in 1356 .
Scene fromThe Deceivers.
The original tough were members of the Thuggee kin , a professional class of devise outlaw who diddle , overcharge , and murder traveler across the Amerind subcontinent from as betimes as the 14th century . Tracing their origin back to seven Muslim tribe , both Muslim and later Hindu membersworshipped Mother Kali , the goddess of destruction .
The Thuggees would bring together wagon train as fellow traveller , gaining their combine until they reached a distant place where it would be good to assault .
At fourth dimension , different members would in secret join at different legs throughout the journeying , pretend not to know each other , until the Thuggees outnumber the caravan ’s travelers . They would then rob and murder the caravan members . The typical method of murder was choking , usually with snare , leading the British soldiers to dub them “ phansigars ” or “ running noose - operator . ”
Once the traveller were dead , the Thuggee members would then dispose of the bodies before stealing the caravan ’s property and escape . Various diachronic estimates place the phone number of their victimssomewhere between 50,000 to 2 million peopleover the years .
It was largely a patrimonial professing with membership being pass down from fathers to Son . However , in some cases , the Thuggees spare the lives of young caravan member , instead adopting them and curry them to become a part of the Thuggee social class , and it was not unheard of that an outsider could befriend and then be recruited by members of the Thuggee kindred .
It was n’t until the 1830s when the British regulator - superior general of India , Lord William Bentinck , and Captain William Sleeman – British soldier and civil servant – worked to eradicate the Thuggee scourge in India .
Relying on captured informants , they were able to try , convict , and sentence around 2,000 Thuggee members . Despite British claims that the Thuggee criminals had been all but erased from India by the 1870s , they rest permeant in the cultural moral sense of the British . English and later American writers in the 19th century continued to write about the Thuggee class and were creditworthy forintroducing the word “ thug ” to the wider English speaking population .
While the word has morphed over metre , adopting different shade and cultural meaning , the original conception of a thug as someone who operates outside the legal philosophy has modify little in the last few hundred years .
After reading about Thuggees and the origin behind the word thug , take howcommon row we all enjoyment come to be . Then assure out theseinteresting history fact that ’ll blow your mind .
