called phanseegurs , or stranglers … Under the pretence of travelling the same way, they enter into conversation with the strangers, share their sweetmeats, and pay them other little attentions, until an opportunity offers of suddenly throwing a rope round their necks with a slip-knot, by which they dexterously contrive to strangle them on the spot.
The arrests that prompted Forbes to compile this brief account can no longer be traced in the records of his Presidency. But his letter is important for several reasons. It is the first British account to mention the word ‘phanseegur’ (Phansigar), which the Emperor Aurangzeb had used to describe the stranglers whom he condemned in his farman of 1672, and which would henceforth be applied to all Thug-like bandits living south of the River Tapti. It is the first, too, to describe one of the Thugs’ most distinctive tactics: the practice of inveigling their way into their victims’ confidence and awaiting the perfect moment to murder them. And its mention of the Phansigars’ favoured weapon – the noose – is a useful reminder that the gangs’ habits and methods evolved over time, for only a few decades later this weapon was superseded by the strangling scarf or cloth, which, while less effective, was far less conspicuous. The noose (often made of catgut and sometimes mounted on a stick) seems not to have been employed after about 1810, and even experienced Phansigars questioned on the subject in later years had no recollection of ever seeing it in use. This they attributed to the danger of being stopped by police and found with such a compromising object in their possession.
No more was heard of the stranglers of the Deccan for two decades after Forbes wrote his report, although some sources suggest that, in 1799, a largegang of suspected Phansigars was detained outside the southern city of Bangalore during the Company’s war against Tipu Sultan of Mysore. The fact that such murderous bands existed was recognized outside the borders of Madras, for a dictionary published in Bombay in 1808 defined the word ‘Phanseeo’ as ‘a term of abuse in Guzerat, * applied also, truly, to thieves or robbers who strangle children in secret or travellers on the road’. But the Phansigars and their methods were certainly not widely known, nor discussed in newspapers or journals during the first decade of the century. The great majority of British officers, it seems safe to say, heard nothing of their activities. Nor, apparently, did the Indians themselves, for ‘among some 2,000 fragments of oral tradition’ collected from the central provinces, one historian searching, many years later, for evidence of the stranglers’ existence found ‘many stories about robbers, but none specifically about Thugs’.
It was not until 1807 that first-hand reports of the Phansigars’ activities began to appear. In that year, purely by chance, several stranglers ‘belonging to a gang that had just returned laden with booty from an expedition to Travancore’ fell into the hands of William Wright, the British magistrate of the district of Chittoor, 75 miles inland from Madras. These men were thrown into jail and, confronted with the prospect of lengthy prison sentences, several of them confessed to playing minor roles in a number of murders. Their crimes included the theft of 2,500 pagodas – the property of a Company officer – and the killing of five of the officer’s servants at Coimbatoor in 1805; the throttling, two years later, of seven men carrying 1,000 pagodas for a Lieutenant Blackston of the Engineers; and, most spectacularly, the murder, on the coast south of Madras, of three men who had been escorting treasure valued at 160,000 rupees. There seemed little doubt that the same band had murdered other victims, including many whose disappearances had never been reported to the police. Wright soon became convinced that gangs of Phansigars were active throughout the Deccan,
The arrests that prompted Forbes to compile this brief account can no longer be traced in the records of his Presidency. But his letter is important for several reasons. It is the first British account to mention the word ‘phanseegur’ (Phansigar), which the Emperor Aurangzeb had used to describe the stranglers whom he condemned in his farman of 1672, and which would henceforth be applied to all Thug-like bandits living south of the River Tapti. It is the first, too, to describe one of the Thugs’ most distinctive tactics: the practice of inveigling their way into their victims’ confidence and awaiting the perfect moment to murder them. And its mention of the Phansigars’ favoured weapon – the noose – is a useful reminder that the gangs’ habits and methods evolved over time, for only a few decades later this weapon was superseded by the strangling scarf or cloth, which, while less effective, was far less conspicuous. The noose (often made of catgut and sometimes mounted on a stick) seems not to have been employed after about 1810, and even experienced Phansigars questioned on the subject in later years had no recollection of ever seeing it in use. This they attributed to the danger of being stopped by police and found with such a compromising object in their possession.
No more was heard of the stranglers of the Deccan for two decades after Forbes wrote his report, although some sources suggest that, in 1799, a largegang of suspected Phansigars was detained outside the southern city of Bangalore during the Company’s war against Tipu Sultan of Mysore. The fact that such murderous bands existed was recognized outside the borders of Madras, for a dictionary published in Bombay in 1808 defined the word ‘Phanseeo’ as ‘a term of abuse in Guzerat, * applied also, truly, to thieves or robbers who strangle children in secret or travellers on the road’. But the Phansigars and their methods were certainly not widely known, nor discussed in newspapers or journals during the first decade of the century. The great majority of British officers, it seems safe to say, heard nothing of their activities. Nor, apparently, did the Indians themselves, for ‘among some 2,000 fragments of oral tradition’ collected from the central provinces, one historian searching, many years later, for evidence of the stranglers’ existence found ‘many stories about robbers, but none specifically about Thugs’.
It was not until 1807 that first-hand reports of the Phansigars’ activities began to appear. In that year, purely by chance, several stranglers ‘belonging to a gang that had just returned laden with booty from an expedition to Travancore’ fell into the hands of William Wright, the British magistrate of the district of Chittoor, 75 miles inland from Madras. These men were thrown into jail and, confronted with the prospect of lengthy prison sentences, several of them confessed to playing minor roles in a number of murders. Their crimes included the theft of 2,500 pagodas – the property of a Company officer – and the killing of five of the officer’s servants at Coimbatoor in 1805; the throttling, two years later, of seven men carrying 1,000 pagodas for a Lieutenant Blackston of the Engineers; and, most spectacularly, the murder, on the coast south of Madras, of three men who had been escorting treasure valued at 160,000 rupees. There seemed little doubt that the same band had murdered other victims, including many whose disappearances had never been reported to the police. Wright soon became convinced that gangs of Phansigars were active throughout the Deccan,
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