THUG, or THAG, the name given in the N. provinces of India to a member of a fraternity who looked on murder as the sole means of staying the wrath of the goddess Kali, and derived their prin cipal means of support from the plunder of their victims. In old times, according to Hindu mythology, Kali made war on a race of giants, from every drop of whose blood sprang a demon. These demons multiplied, and at last the god dess created two men to whom she gave handkerchiefs, with which they strangled their infernal beings. When the men had finished their task the goddess gave them the privilege of using the handker chief against their fellows, and so the class of Thugs is said to have arisen. Though worshipping a Hindu goddess, the majority of the Thugs were Moham medans. They usually traveled in gangs, the members of which had ostensibly some honest calling in their own com munity, and in selecting their victims al ways endeavored to pitch on persons of property in order that while propitiating the goddess they might enrich her wor shipers. Various steps were taken to
suppress the Thugs, both by the native and the English governments, and in 1829 Lord William Bentinck adopted such stringent measures that in six years (1830-1835) 2,000 of them were arrested; and of these, 1,500 were convicted and sentenced to death, transportation, or im prisonment, according to the gravity of the charges proved against them. In 1836 a law was passed making the fact of belonging to a gang of Thugs punish able by imprisonment for life with hard labor, and though some gangs continued to operate sporadically for many years, the system is now powerless.