Thug
Thug names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Thug or THAG As for the subject of Thucydides' history
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or THAG As for the subject of Thucydides' history, if the Peloponnesian War was not a matter of importance in universal history, it was at least not Thucydides' fault that he was not a contemporary with some more important war. But we may beg leave to doubt whether the Peloponnesian War was of inferior interest for the fortunes of mankind. Had it not been for the exhaustion it induced, Greece would not have succumbed to the Macedonian, and consequently Alexander's conquests would never have spread Greek culture over the ancient world. But, apart from this, Thucydides' history is the history of the effects of empire on an imperial state; and, as such, will always be of enthralling interest to citizens of sovereign communities. Finally, Thucydides' style, criticized by Dionysius and condemned by Mure, is (in the speeches) difficult beyond all possibility of dispute. To throw the blame of this obs obscurity on the unformed condition of Attic Greek at the time when Thucydides wrote is warrantable indeed, but is no adequate defense. To point, on the other hand, to the tract "On the Athenian Polity" as proof that Attic prose could be translucent in Thucydides' time is beside the point, for Attic, as is well known, could only be written well by those who lived continuously in Athens, and Thucydides was exiled for many a year. But, in truth, the question whether it is Thucydides or the literary age in which he lived that is to be blamed for his obscurity is a wholly irrelevant question. Obscurity, whatever be its cause, is a crime in a writer. But it is a crime which carries its own punishment, for it diminishes the number of an author's readers. The exact amount of criminality is not to be determined on any abstract principles or to judge. by the exercise of any mysterious " taste "; it admits of one simple practical test - viz., has the obscurity of his style (in so far as it exists), as a matter of fact, prevented him from attaining fame? In the case of Thucydides it has had no such effect, as all testify. People will not read a difficult author if there is an easier one out of whom they can get as much. That Thucydides has, in spite of his difficulty sufficient testimony that there is no other , always been read is in itself historian to rank with him. the N. provinces of India to a member
Thug or THAG whose blood sprang a demon
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or THAG whose blood sprang a demon. These demons multiplied, and at last the goddess 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 handkerchief 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 Mohammedans. They usually traveled in gangs, the members of which had ostensibly some honest calling in their own community, and in selecting their victims always endeavored to pitch on persons of property in order that while propitiating goddess they might enrich worshipers. Various steps were taken to suppress the Thugs, both by the native and the English governments, and in 1829 Lord illiam Bentinck adopted opted 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 imprisonment, 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 punishable by imprisonment for life with hard labor, and though some gangs continued to operate sporadically for many years, the system is now powerless.
Thug or THAG, the name given in of a fraternity
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or THAG, the name given in of a fraternity who looked on murder as the sole means of staying the wrath of the goddess Kali, and derived their principal 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
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 relays the origin myth of Kali's handkerchiefs as if it were the fraternity's own charter, and treats the Thugs as a single hereditary brotherhood of ritual stranglers broken by Lord William Bentinck's campaign of 1830-35. Historians since the 1990s -- Radhika Singha, Martine van Woerkens and Kim Wagner among them -- have argued that much of that coherence was manufactured in the courtroom: the evidence came overwhelmingly from 'approvers', informers whose lives depended on confirming what William Sleeman's officers already believed, and what they described looks more like scattered bands of highway robbers than one organised cult. That gangs strangled and robbed travellers on the roads of central India is not in doubt; that they formed a religion with a founding legend is. The colonial machinery outlasted the crime it named: the Thuggee and Dacoity Department survived into the twentieth century before being folded into criminal intelligence work, while the loose word 'thug' had already escaped into English to mean any violent ruffian, which is now its only common sense.
Written for this edition, 2026.