MF:

RK displays his esoteric knowledge of the contemporary religions,cults, and their nuances (of his India) through his description of Strickland (Miss Youghal's Sais - PTFTH, see also The Return of Imray and The Mark of the Beast).

BP:

Kipling mentions the Thugs, in a curious mixture of religious, racial and
occupational types in the poem "The Masque of Plenty". He spells the word as
thag and in the glossary of my oldest edition of Departmental Ditties
(Thacker, London, 9th Ed. 1897) this is explained as "a highway robber,
garotter".

Today, however, Mr. Alastair Wilson told us:

We seem to have wandered a bit from the original question. My reading is that we don't now of any such reference!

I think that you will find that the Thugs used a folded kerchief to throttle their victims (it's a long time since I read The Deceivers) rather than poison, tho' I have it in mind that they may have used narcotics to render their victims comatose before throttling them.

Thugs were worshippers of the Hindu goddess KALI strangling their victims in the name of religion (and robbery provided the means of livelihood) as Michael Jefferson has already told us. KALI is the cult name of DURGA, SIVA's wife. As KALI she has red eyes, four arms, matted hair, huge, fang-like teeth and a protruding tongue that drips with blood. She wears earrings of corpses and a necklace of skulls, and her body is girdled with serpents and asps. And we know from Cleopatra what asps, any many other serpents, are kept for: producing poison. Posion or narcotics, what's the difference? IMO _we_ did not wander that far from the original question.

Whishing you all a HAPPY EASTER,

Dick.