A Report on the System of Megpunnaism,

thuggee child stealing

A remarkably preserved copy of this rare treatise on the Thuggee practise of child-stealing. While Thuggee is commonly understood today as a homogenous culture of professional banditry, rather than a total phantom of the British Empire's imagination, the image Sleeman paints of a hereditary murdering, Kali worshipping, child sacrificing cult is far from the truth.

The work contains eleven trial cases of alleged child theft with intent to sell, with additional depositions. 'Megpunna' was the word given by the accused to the process of child taking, while 'Thuggee' itself was the process of banditry and strangling of adult victims. One of the main problems with the depositions, as Sleeman points out himself, is that the promise of a commuted death sentence encouraged the examined witnesses to be enthusiastic, to the point of exaggeration, in their recounting of the facts. There is no doubt that children, sometimes newly orphaned, were adopted or sold in some capacity by practising 'Thugs', but the more insidious insinuations seem to fall through in the actual depositions.

Sir William Henry Sleeman (1788-1856) was one of the main opponents of 'Thuggee', becoming head of the commission for suppressing thuggee and dacoity 1839-41, and heading the Suppression Acts of 1839 and 1843. In his period of leadership the Thuggee and Dacoity Department hanged or imprisoned over 1400 'Thuggees' and by 1848 the large tribes had been thoroughly broken up. At the end of the work he gives a list of 273 names of individual he considers 'at large': the irony of his own zealotry is apparently lost on him.

Rare in commerce, not appearing at auction in the last 125 years, and only in 5 UK institutions (BL, SOAS, Wellcome, Chetham, Belfast).

First edition; 8vo (22 x 14.5); folding genealogical chart, contemporary pencil ownership inscription to title; original green moiré pattern cloth, spine lettered in gilt, binders stamp to finely floral embossed endpapers, spine a little faded, a fine copy; iv, 121 pp.