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rather than to her lord. Moreover, many of them were Mohammedans; but, for our purpose, the significant fact is that when the Thugs were Hindus they were K[ra]liÇivaites. And we believe that these secret murderers, strange as it seems, originated in a reformatory movement. As is well known, it was a religious principle with them not to spill blood.[54] They always throttled. They were, of course, when they first became known m 1799 (Sherwood's account), nothing but robbers and murderers. But, like the other Çivaite monstrosities, they regarded their work as a religious act, and always invoked Kf=alli if they were Hindus. We think it probable, therefore, that the sect originated among the K[=a]li-worshippers as a protest against blood-letting. Admitting that robbery is under Çiva's protection (Çiva is 'god of robbers'), and that K[=a]li wanted victims, a sect probably claimed that the victims should be throttled, and not bled. Not that this was necessarily a new reform. There is every reason to suppose that most of Çiva's females are aboriginal wild-tribe divinities. Now among these savages one sees at times a distinct refusal to bleed human victims. Thuggery may then have been the claim of an old conservative party, who wished to keep up the traditional throttling; though this is pure speculation, for, at the time when the sect became exposed, this means of death was merely the safest way to kill. They insisted always on being called Thugs, and scorned the name of thief. They were suppressed by 1840. Reynolds describes them as "mostly men of mild and unobtrusive manners, possessing a cheerful disposition."[55]
THE VISHNUITE SECTS.
There is a formal idealistic Civaism, as we have shown, and there was once a dualistic Vishnuism; but in general the Vishnuite is an idealist. To comprehend the quarrels among the sects of this religion, however, it will be necessary to examine the radical philosophical differences of their founders, for one passes, in going from modern Çivaism to Vishnuism, out of ignorant superstition into philosophical religion, of which many even of the weaker traits are but recent Hinduistic effeminacy substituted for an older manly thinking.
