The goddess Kali is the most cruel and bloodthirsty among the Hindu deities. She looks the same: a naked or half-dressed woman in a panther skin with blue-black skin and four arms, in one hand she has a sword, in the other - a severed head, with the other two she instructs her fans to kill and destroy all living things. Is it any wonder that a secret sect of assassins has been active in India for a long time ?! During its existence, its members sent about two million people to the next world!
HORRIBLE FACE, KIND INSIDE
The cult of Kali is not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance.
According to legend, the evil demon Mahisha wanted to subjugate the world. In contrast, the gods created the invincible warrior Kali. With a wild cry, she rushed into battle, knowing no mercy to her enemies. As soon as she blew, hordes of brave warriors appeared from her breath. As soon as you glance, volcanoes erupted, the earth shook, seas and rivers boiled. Seeing her power, the evil demons chose to retreat. But Makhish did not manage to slip out of her hands - she cut off his head. Intoxicated with victory, Kali could not stop and continued to kill. Then Shiva pretended to be a child and lay down on the ground. The distraught Kali stepped on the baby, he began to cry, and the warrior stopped. She looked at the boy in amazement, his tears touched her deeply, she took the baby in her arms and put it to her breast. Thus Kali became a kind, caring and gentle mother. Since then, the goddess Kali has personified both death and destruction, and the joy of motherhood, changeability and creation.
ONE FOR ALL
The Thagi - a secret sect of murderers - did not want to see Kali's diversity and depth of meanings, they were ready to worship her exclusively as the goddess of death and destruction. Translated from Hindi, the word “thag” means “robber”. The first written mention of tkhags was left by the Chinese traveler Xuan Zang in the 7th century: under cover of night, robbers go out onto the roads and strangle everyone who moves with their luggage. But for a long time no one could have imagined that we were talking about a whole community, which included representatives of different castes, from the lowest to the highest. It was a deeply conspiratorial organization, thanks to which it managed to exist for a very long time.
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The main goal of the thagas is to sacrifice as many people as possible to the bloodthirsty Kali. They differed from ordinary robbers in that they first killed a person and then robbed. Strangulation was preferred to all methods of murder. Often, at first, they entered into the confidence of the victim, after which they did their dirty deed. The strangulation technology was perfected to such an extent that the thagi could strangle a person in a tent with several sleeping companions, and no one noticed anything. Like any secret brotherhood, the Thags had their own traditions and language by which they could recognize each other. Thagi hunted people far from settlements, since India is a large country. The rest of the time they led an ordinary life and were engaged in ordinary crafts. Having become rich on robbery, the thagi climbed the caste ladder, many became respected people. They often passed on their secret craft to children. They preferred to marry or get married to their own people.
PEOPLE LOOP
The thagi wielded in groups. They had their own godfather - jemadar. He needed to unbuckle most of his booty. Bhutot was the second in rank after Jemadar. The victim was strangled with a silk scarf with a weighted end. The signal for the attack was a gesture of the leader, when he prayerfully raised his eyes to the sky. The cry of the owl, the favorite bird of the goddess Kali, also signaled a signal to attack. The performer discreetly crept up to the victim, threw a handkerchief on her and tightened it around her neck very quickly. All the thagi were trained to use the headscarf, but only bhutot had the right to use it. If the victim turned out to be a tough nut to crack and did not immediately fall dead, assistants arrived to help the executioner. They pounced on the poor fellow and threw him to the ground, holding his hands and feet.
After the murder, the thagi laid a carpet on the ground, sat on the edge of it, and gazed to the east. The chief read a prayer in honor of the goddess Kali and handed each participant of the "operation" a piece of special - "sacred" - yellow sugar. The leaders assured their subordinates: the one who bites off at least a piece of sugar will never leave the crooked path again and will not be able to resist the power of Kali. In fact, the sugar most likely contained narcotic substances. The bandits shared the loot right there. Then a large incision was made on the body of the dead man so that Kali could kiss the wound and drink all the blood. After that, the corpse was buried.
A rich arsenal of fighting techniques for strangulation included strangulation techniques for an ordinary (unprepared) person, countermeasures in the event of a collision with a “colleague”, and even self-strangulation techniques if it was impossible to hide, since surrender was considered a shame. The Thagi worked out all the techniques so effectively that they were later adopted by the Indian police and special forces. These methods are still used by the special forces during arrests.
THE SECRET BECOMES DISCOVER
In addition to the stranglers, among the worshipers of the goddess Kali were also daggers and poisoners. The daggers wielded a knife, delivering a fatal blow to the back of the victim's head. In the arsenal of the poisoners there were various poisons, which they applied to the most sensitive areas of the skin, as well as to the mucous membrane.
The Thagi were not the only ones who put the killing of Hindus on stream. Ordinary bandits, for whom the murder process was not ritualistic, “mowed down” them. They were called Pindari. For the most part, these were peasants who, at the end of agricultural work, went out on the high road in order to improve their financial situation. And if the Thags had a certain qualification for the number of murders necessary for a qualitative reincarnation after reincarnation in the next life, then the Pindari killed as many people as they could rob.
By the 16th century, ritual murder in India had become so widespread that whole caravans were openly killed and robbed on the roads. Being a thag was honorable and rewarding. The poorest people in India saw in this craft the only way to get out of poverty. The Thagi took advantage of this and introduced the Hindus to a cruel occupation.
Even Thévenot, a French traveler of the 17th century, complained in his letters to his homeland that all the roads from Delhi to Agra are teeming with criminals. The secret community found a second wind as the opium trade between India and China flourished. The number of people transporting money from drugs increased, which the thagi did not fail to take advantage of. In 1812 alone, almost 40 thousand people disappeared on the roads of India without a trace.
The situation began to change only with the arrival of the British colonialists in the country. Little by little the officials of the East India Company began to suspect that the matter was unclean. The bodies of forcibly killed people were constantly found along the roads, and, moreover, robbed to the bone. It was not possible to establish the identity of the killed (as it turned out later, all the dead were from distant places, so there were problems with identification). There were always no witnesses to the crimes. But a lot of water had flowed under the bridge before the British realized that they were talking about a well-organized gang. Later it became clear that the Thags had patrons - sovereign rajas, as well as high-ranking government officials who skimmed the cream off the criminal business. The British had to open a hunt - now for thags. More than three thousand murderers were found and seized in 1831-1837 alone. Almost each of them confessed to the murder, and a thag named Bukhram said that he had killed 931 people with his own hands. The fight against the thagami bore fruit, and the secret community was brought to clean water. Most of the thags were hanged and thrown into prison, some lay low, but there were no better times for them. All that the thagi can afford today is to sacrifice a rooster to Kali. They are content with that.what the thagi can afford today is to sacrifice a rooster to Kali. They are content with that.what the thagi can afford today is to sacrifice a rooster to Kali. They are content with that.
Vlad ROGOV