Name a good (fairly recent) book about Thugees.

[Laudenum]

I’ve just discovered that Thugees exist, and I want to know more about them.

As much as possible.

Do any of the Dopers (who never cease to amaze me with their lists of books they have read), have any recommendations?

[CalMeacham]

The books I used weren’t “fairly recent”, but seemed to be pretty good. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the referrences here. Wikipedia lists a book by Mike Dash entitled Thug from 2005 – that’s more recent than anything I’ve used.

One book I used was Secret Societies by Normal MacKenzie, and the references to the Thuggee inc;luded in it.

[blindboyard]

Having read the Mike Dash book, I’d recommend it.

[Omar_Little]

Thuggee

In literature

The story of Thuggee was popularised by books such as Philip Meadows Taylor’s novel Confessions of a Thug, 1839, leading to the word “thug” entering the English language. Ameer Ali, the protagonist of Confessions of a Thug was said to be based on a real Thug called Syeed Amir Ali.

John Masters’ novel The Deceivers also deals with the subject. A more recent book is George Bruce’s The Stranglers: The cult of Thuggee and its overthrow in British India (1968). Dan Simmons’s Song of Kali, 1985, features a Thuggee cult.
The 19th century American writer Mark Twain discusses the Thuggee fairly extensively in chapters 9 and 10 of “Following the Equator: Volume II”, 1897, THE ECCO PRESS, ISBN 0-88001-519-5.

Christopher Moore’s novel, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, describes a Thuggee ritual.

The 1976 science fiction novel Strangler’s Moon by E.E. “Doc” Smith and Stephen Goldin is based on the Thuggee (book #2 in the Family D’Alembert series).

Sci-Fi/Fantasy author Glen Cook uses an India-like setting and Thuggee as a plot vehicle in his books Shadow Games (June 1989), and Dreams of Steel (April 1990). The books and later ones that continue the storyline form part of Cook’s Black Company series.

The Serpent’s Shadow by Mercedes Lackey has a Hindu villain, whose minions are Thuggee, almost without exception.

Author William T. Vollmann draws upon Sleeman in his story The Yellow Sugar, which is one of two tales in his collection The Rainbow Stories dealing with the colour yellow.

Arthur Conan Doyle attributes the disfigurements of the perpetrator in his Sherlock Holmes novel The Adventure of the Crooked Man to his capture and torture by Thuggee rebels opposing the British occupation of India.

In the pre-Holmes short story “The Mystery of Uncle Jeremy’s Household” (1887), Arthur Conan Doyle centres the narrative on a beautiful female Thuggee in England who has “occasional fits of fantaticism” and “horrible conceptions of religion”.

Italian writer Emilio Salgari (1862–1911) wrote about thugs in I Misteri della Jungla Nera (1895) and Le Due Tigri (1904) and other short stories.

George Macdonald Fraser’s novel Flashman in the Great Game (1975) makes references to the “cult” of Thuggee, while the phrase: “pass the tobacco” is used as a verbal signal for the killing to begin.

The DC Comics character Ravan is a Thuggee assassin who kills to delay the return of Kali. He is the enemy of Kobra who seeks to bring about her return.

In the novel The Thirteenth Manifestation: the Song of Kali Ma (2006) by Josephine Dunne, thuggees appear as assassins who operate from an ancient subterranean Kali temple under the mountains between the Pakistan and Indian line of control in Kashmir.

[Hypno-Toad]

Here’s one from 2003: Children of Kali. It wanders quite a bit narratively as the author travels through India, but still enjoyable.

[Laudenum]

@Hypno-Toad

Here’s one from 2003: Children of Kali. It wanders quite a bit narratively as the author travels through India, but still enjoyable.

Just picked that up from the library today.

@CalMeacham

The books I used weren’t “fairly recent”, but seemed to be pretty good. Unfortunately, I haven’t got the referrences here. Wikipedia lists a book by Mike Dash entitled Thug from 2005 – that’s more recent than anything I’ve used.

One book I used was Secret Societies by Normal MacKenzie, and the references to the Thuggee inc;luded in it.

‘Used’?
What did you ‘use’ them for?

[AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet]

He used them for the human sacrifice ceremony as seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

kalima - indiana jones

[DocCathode]

I want to recommend the short story Because Thou Lovest The Burning Ground by Michael P Kube-McDowell. It’s an alternate history story that asks the question ‘There are many gods in India. What if Mohandas Gandhi had followed a violent faith?’. It is non-cheesy, excellent, and chillingly plausible.

[Laudenum]

@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet

He used them for the human sacrifice ceremony as seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBIdcUxdgo0

Was he one of the set designers?

[CalMeacham]

‘Used’?
What did you ‘use’ them for?

Reference material for my book on Medusa.
The Thugee worshipped Kali/Durga, who in the form of Smashan Kali is one of the Gorgon parallels of India, with her huge staring eyes and broad open mouth with tusks and protruding tongue. She even carries a harpe-like sword and has a garland of heads (!)Many depictions of her soften this image to a modern-looking Indian woman, but some versions are horrific and gorgon-like.

Unfortunately, the only reproduction I’ve seen of an image of Kali from a Thuggee temple is pretty lame and disappointing. One British contemporary compared it to a child’s toy. Nothing like the (unrealistic) stone image shown in the Indiana Jones movie. Or the very open temple to Kali in Dakshineswar in India today.