Thugs and Dacoits: Volume VI: The Imperial Archives-From Discovery to the Civilisational Mission: English Writings on India

The volumes focus on select aspects of the British imperial archives: the accounts of “discovery” and exploration – fauna and flora, geography, climate – the people of the subcontinent, English domesticity and social life in the subcontinent, the wars and skirmishes – including the “Mutiny” of 1857-58 – and the “civilisational mission”. This volume documents how the practice of thuggee was viewed by the British before: as if it symbolized everything that was wrong with the social order in India. The texts collected here are accounts of how the British ‘discovered’ the subcontinent. The narrative of discovery, with the freshness of the ‘new’, was couched very often in the rhetoric of wonder. But this sense of wonder, even astonishment in some cases at the variety, magnitude and sheer difference of the land and its people, was tempered over time with a narrative of exploration.

Table of Contents:
Prefatory Note General Introduction: Archive and Empire Introduction Acknowledgements 1. J. Shakespeare. ‘Observations Regarding Badheks and T’hegs.’ Asiatic Researches 13 (1820): 282–292. 2. [Doctor] Sherwood. ‘Of the Murderers Called Phansigars’ [1816]. Asiatic Researches 13 (1820): 250–282. 3. W.H. Sleeman. Ramaseeana, or, A Vocabulary of the Peculiar Language Used by the Thugs. Calcutta: GH Huttmann, Military Orphan Press, 1836. 4. W.H. Sleeman. Thugs, or, Phansigars of India. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1839. 5. W.H. Sleeman. Report on the Depredations Committed by the Thug Gangs of Upper and Central India. Calcutta: GH Huttmann, Military Orphan Press, 1840. 6. J.A.R. Stevenson. ‘Some Account of the Phansigars, or Gang-Robbers and of the Shudgarshids, or Tribes of Jugglers.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1 (1834): 280–283. 7. H.H. Spry. ‘Some Accounts of the Gang Murderers of Central India, Commonly Called Thugs; Accompanying the Skulls of Seven of Them.’ The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 8 (March 1834): 511–524. 8. Lt. Reynolds. ‘On the Thugs.’ The New Monthly Magazine 38 (1833): 277–287. 9. E. Thornton. Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs and Notices of Some of the Proceedings of the Government of India for the Suppression of the Crime of Thuggee. London: W.H. Allen, 1837. 10. ‘The Thugs; or, Secret Murderers of India’, Review of Ramaseeana, by W.H. Sleeman, The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal 64 (January 1837): 357–395. 11. Review of Ramaseeana, by W.H. Sleeman, The Foreign Quarterly Review 21 (April 1838): 1–32. 12. F. Hollick. Murder Made Moral; or, An Account of the Thugs, and Other Secret Murderers of India. Manchester: A. Heywood, 1840. 13. Edward P. Eddrup. The Thugs; or, Secret Murderers of India. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1853. 14. John William Kaye. The Administration of the East India Company. London: Richard Bentley, 1853. 2nd ed. 15. Selections from the Records of the Government of India (Foreign Department). No XXIV. Calcutta: John Gray, ‘Calcutta Gazette’ Office, 1858. 16. Charles Hervey. Report on the Crime of Thuggee by Means of Poisons in British Territory for the Years 1864, 1865, and 1866. Delhi: General Superintendent’s Office Press, 1868. 17. E.J. Gunthorpe. Notes on the Criminal Tribes Residing In, or Frequenting the Bombay Presidency, Berar, and the Central Provinces. Bombay: Times of India Steam Press, 1882. About the Editor

About the Author :
Pramod K. Nayar teaches at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India. Nayar also holds the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad.