s. m, obber, an assassin who inveigles and kills for money or other property; a cheat. The Ṭhags were a well-known class of murderers who infested India. They were devout worshippers of Kali, and the murders were done as an act of worship; the property of the murdered persons was the gift of the goddess to her votaries. Their expeditions were undertaken after solemn worship of, and consultation with, the goddess, and in any murder her will was rigidly observed. The most unfavourable omen was the prolonged howl of a single jackal. This made them abandon any enterprise even on the threshold of assured success. They had a phraseology laws and customs of their own and were a terrible and widespread fraternity. The victims were sometimes stupified or killed with Dhatúrá but, as a rule, the murder was effected by strangling with the sacred noose, and these expert stranglers followed parties or individual travellers for days a waiting the auspicious moment of the favour of Kali. They adopted all manner of disguises. Ṭhaggí was introduced into the Panjab by Wazir Singh, a Mazhabí Sikh. It has been one of the glories of British rule in India that it has eradicated this horrible system of wholesale religious murder. In the Panjab and probably in India generally Ṭhaggí is now practically extinct, though there is still a Thuggee Department:—ṭhagg bájí, s. f. Deception, chicanery, fraud, cheating, robbery:—ṭhagg biddiá, s. f. The art and cunning of ṭhaggs, fraudulent dexterity.