Kali or Bhawani was the principal deity of the Thugs, as of most of
the criminal and lower castes; and those who were Muhammadans got
over the difficulty of her being a Hindu goddess by pretending that
Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, was an incarnation of her. In
former times they held that the goddess was accustomed to relieve
them of the trouble of destroying the dead bodies by devouring them
herself; but in order that they might not see her doing this she had
strictly enjoined on them never to look back on leaving the site of
a murder. On one occasion a novice of the fraternity disobeyed this
rule and, unguardedly looking behind him, saw the goddess in the
act of feasting upon a body with the half of it hanging out of her
mouth. Upon this she declared that she would no longer devour those
whom the Thugs slaughtered; but she agreed to present them with one
of her teeth for a pickaxe, a rib for a knife and the hem of her lower
garment for a noose, and ordered them for the future to cut about and
bury the bodies of those whom they destroyed. As there seems reason
to suppose that the goddess Kali represents the deified tiger, on
which she rides, she was eminently appropriate as the patroness of
the Thugs and in the capacity of the devourer of corpses.