also they did not scruple to employ weapons; as in the murder of seven
treasure-bearers near Hindoria in Damoh, who would not probably have
allowed the Thugs to approach them, and in consequence were openly
attacked and killed with swords. [700] Other instances are given in
Colonel Sleeman's narrative, and they were also accustomed to cut
and slash about the bodies of their victims after death. The belief
that they were guided by the divine will may probably have arisen as
a means of excusing their own misdeeds to themselves and allaying
their fear of such retribution as being haunted by the ghosts of
their victims. Similar instances of religious beliefs and practices
are given in the accounts of other criminals, such as the Badhaks and
Sansias. And the more strict and serious observances of the Thugs may
be accounted for by the more atrocious character of their crimes and
the more urgent necessity of finding some palliative.

The veneration paid to the pickaxe, which will shortly be described,
merely arises from the common animistic belief that tools and
implements generally achieve the results obtained from them by their
inherent virtue and of their own volition, and not from the human hand
which guides them and the human brain which fashioned them to serve
their ends. Members of practically all castes worship the implements
of their profession and thus afford evidence of the same belief,
the most familiar instance of which is perhaps, 'The pestilence
that walketh in the darkness and the arrow that flieth by noonday';
where the writer intended no metaphor but actually thought that the
pestilence walked and the arrow flew of their own volition.

14. Worship of Kali

Kali or Bhawani was the principal deity of the Thugs, as of most of
the criminal and lower castes; and those who were Muhammadans got
over the difficulty of her being a Hindu goddess by pretending that
Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, was an incarnation of her. In
former times they held that the goddess was accustomed to relieve
them of the trouble of destroying the dead bodies by devouring them
herself; but in order that they might not see her doing this she had
strictly enjoined on them never to look back on leaving the site of
a murder. On one occasion a novice of the fraternity disobeyed this
rule and, unguardedly looking behind him, saw the goddess in the
act of feasting upon a body with the half of it hanging out of her
mouth. Upon this