them to murderers, the only observation they have ever made was that
formerly there was no danger of their ever being hung or transported,
but that now they would rather that their children should learn some
less dangerous trade."

12. Belief in divine support

They considered that all their victims were killed by the agency
of God and that they were merely irresponsible agents, appointed
to live by killing travellers as tigers by feeding on deer. If a
man committed a real murder they held that his family must become
extinct, and adduced the fact that this fate had not befallen them
as proof that their acts of killing were justifiable. Nay, they even
held that those who oppressed them were punished by the goddess:
[699] "Was not Nanha, the Raja of Jalon," said one of them, "made
leprous by Devi for putting to death Budhu and his brother Khumoli,
two of the most noted Thugs of their day? He had them trampled under
the feet of elephants, but the leprosy broke out on his body the very
next day. When Mudhaji Sindhia caused seventy Thugs to be executed at
Mathura was he not warned in a dream by Devi that he should release
them? And did he not the very day after their execution begin to
spit blood? And did he not die within three months?" Their subsequent
misfortunes and the success of the British officers against them they
attributed to their disobedience of the ordinances of Devi in slaying
women and other classes of prohibited persons and their disregard of
her omens. They also held that the spirits of all their victims went
straight to Paradise, and this was the reason why the Thugs were not
troubled by them as other murderers were.

13. Theory of Thuggee as a religious sect

The fact that the Thugs considered themselves to be directed by
the deity, reinforced by their numerous superstitious beliefs and
observances, has led to the suggestion by one writer that they were
originally a religious sect, whose principal tenet was the prohibition
of the shedding of blood. There is, however, no evidence in support
of this view in the accounts of Colonel Sleeman, incomparably the
best authority. Their method of strangulation was, as has been seen,
simply the safest and most convenient means of murder: it enabled
them to dispense with arms, by the sight of which the apprehensions
of their victims would have been aroused, and left no traces on the
site of the crime to be observed by other travellers. On occasion