w that trades go by castes in India; a family of
carpenters will be a family of carpenters a century or five centuries
hence, if they last so long; so with grain dealers, blacksmiths,
leather-makers and every known trade. If we keep this in mind
when we speak of 'professional criminals' we shall realize what
the term really means. It means that the members of a tribe whose
ancestors were criminals from time immemorial are themselves
destined by the use of the caste to commit crime, and their
descendants will be offenders against the law till the whole
tribe is exterminated or accounted for in the manner of the Thugs.
Therefore, when a man tells you he is a badhak, or a kanjar,
or a sonoria, he tells you, what few Europeans ever thoroughly
realize, that he is an habitual and avowed offender against the
law, and has been so from the beginning and will be so to the
end; that reform is impossible, for it is his trade, his caste--I
may almost say, his religion--to commit crime."

The Thugs were broken up by Captain Sleeman, a brave and able
British detective who succeeded in entering that assassination
society and was initiated into its terrible mysteries. A large
number of the leaders were executed from time to time, but the
government, whose policy is always to respect religious customs
of the Hindus, administered as little punishment as possible,
and "rounding up" all of the members of this cult, as ranchmen
would say, "corralled" them at the Town of Jabal-pur, near the
City of Allahabad, in northeastern India, where they have since
been under surveillance. Originally there were 2,500, but now
only about half of that number remain, who up to this date are
not allowed to leave without a permit the inclosure in which
they are kept.

One of the criminal tribes, called Barwars, numbers about a thousand
families and inhabits forty-eight villages in the district of
Gonda, in the Province of Oudh, not far from Delhi. They live
quietly and honestly upon their farms during the months of planting
and harvesting, but between crops they wander in small gangs
over distant parts of the country, robbing and plundering with
great courage and skill. They even despoil the temples of the
gods. The only places that are sacred to them are the temple
of Jaganath (Juggernaut), in the district of Orissa, and the
shrine of a certain Mohammedan martyr. They have a regular
organization under hereditary chiefs, and if a member of the
clan gives