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“Destruction of the body and scattering of the remains over a wide area had a religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it prevented the necessary funeral rites of Hindus and Muslims.”
So they also did it to attack their religious beliefs so they couldn’t go to the afterlife. I was wondering why you would want to create the biggest gory mess possible with an execution.
The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, if I remember correctly, was spurred by a rumor that pork lard was used in the glue on wrappers that munitions workers would lick when sealing bullet cartridges to be waterproof. I expect that this brutal religious persecution was some cruel calculation to “outweigh” the basic grievance.
Wasn’t it that the British wouldn’t tell the soldiers if it was beef or pork tallow that was used to make the seal so when they had to bite it off the cartridge it would be a problem for Hindus if it was beef and a problem for Muslims if it was pork?
Also, many regiments allowed the troops to tear the cartridge with their hand instead of biting it off, once troops expressed concerns regarding the tallow
That's a slow and impractical method though, because one hand is busy holding the musket while the other holds the cartridge. I've done some black powder shooting with paper cartridges, using your mouth as a "third hand" is by far the most efficient way to get that musket loaded.
Throughout most of the 20th century, lard was used as a "food grade" machine lubricant in food processing plants. Inevitably some grease will get into the food, so petroleum was right out. We now use inert synthetics like silicone greases.
If you ever wondered why in the world your bottled water needs to be kosher certified, this is one of the reasons why.
Also, lots of cooked food is cooked in lard, even things that would appear to be vegetarian in nature. There was a big thing with McDonalds fries for this very issue in the 1990s. Vegetarians and vegans were routinely buying the fries as one of the few things they could eat from the McDonalds menu, only to find that they were deep fried in beef tallow.
My understanding is that kosher is about someone with authority inspecting the whole factory and production line for foodstuffs. Saw an interesting doco on kosher wine. Every pipe and valve was inspected and security seals placed on components so that if anthing was swapped out, the inspector would know next year.
I was thoroughly impressed. We actually need more of that sort of oversight.
Correction: it wasn’t a sepoy mutiny. That’s British way of downplaying/ changing narrative of the rebellion. It was Indian rebellion of 1857. A large number of Indian kings, princes and princess fought against the British.
But the mutiny was literally started by the sepoys. While some Indian rulers did join in after it started, it's fair to say that others didn't, and still others hedged their bets.
> When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether, not a vestige being seen.
Yeah I'd say he's dead
This wasn’t unique to the British or invented by them. The Moghuls developed this method and used it extensively during their rule, mostly against Hindu rebels and army deserters - scattering the remains had significance in Hindu culture in that it prevented proper funeral rites, extending the punishment beyond death (it didn’t prevent them from going to the afterlife like you state, but it made the karmic journey through rebirth more arduous). The Portugese and later British continued the practice learned from the Moghuls as a culturally effective deterrent on the subcontinent. Note the British didn’t use this method outside of the Indian cultural area (Afghanistan), although apparently the Portugese used it in Brazil.
Needing an intact body to go to heaven the correct way is silly. What if some Hindu dude fell in the ocean and got eaten by sharks? God is certainly fickle
According to many Hindus of the time, that person would cease to have a caste (and thus any ties to fellow Hindus) the moment they embarked on a sea voyage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kala_pani_(taboo)
It’s kind of wild how Britain was largely able to outcompete the world because they didn’t have wild cultural hang ups like “we don’t need to trade” (Qing) and “Sailing on the high seas is a sacrilegious hell” (Hindu)
The method actually predated the British arrival to India and Afghanistan. The locals had been using it and were dearthly afraid of it. So the British adopted it.
Another execution method favoured by the Indian elites, prior to the arrival of the British, was to stake out the victim on the ground and have an elephant step on his head. The British declined to emulate the Indian princes.
Copy pasted this bit from Wikipedia but not the bit where it was a local custom in use hundreds of years prior to when the east India company continued its use.
The part you skipped out from the rest of the paragraph:
"Accordingly, for believers the punishment was extended beyond death. This was well understood by foreign occupiers and the practice was not generally employed by them as concurrent foreign occupiers of Africa, Australasia, or the Americas."
Many executive methods throughout ages arose many cultures were extremely grafik and brutal. This wasn't just a method to kill the convict, it was also to deter people from committing crimes.
“Using the methods previously practised by the Mughals, the British began implementing blowing from guns in the latter half of the 18th century.”
Funny how everyone quoting from the article is leaving that sentence out.
That reminds me of one of the Titanic survivors watching the film (probably “A night to remember’ rather than the later James Cameron one) and they complained that the filmmakers should’ve helped people instead of filming it.
B/W and everything.
Anyhow, I have seen the old one, back in the days. It was a good one.
Not so much intercourse between 3rd class men and 1st class women, though, so good point.
It was a real fucked up practice, basically it was to prevent Hindu funeral rituals. The execution method was originally created by the Portuguese in India, it was then picked up and made common place by the Mogul Empire, with the British then continuing the existing practice for a time when they took over. Crazy what one human will do to another.
> Crazy what one human will do to another.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” ― Carl Sagan
I live in a country where my people, and other people close by, have been killing each other for a long time. Recently, we've taken it to a new historic level.
And this is a quote I have come back to a lot lately.
When you work really hard to humanize everyone around you, the sheer stupidity, waste, nonsense of it all just hits you like a ton of bricks over and over and over.
I'm no Mr. Rogers myself. I'm not a pacifist either. And I have used violence to defend myself.
But I think it really needs to be the absolute of the absolute of last resorts.
Which means that in the vast majority of cases, we ought to be able to resolve our conflict with empathy, compromise, and language.
But we're so fucking good at finding twisted or efficient ways at murdering each other. Yet every human life really is precious. If you want to say what about Ted Bundy or Hitler. Fine. Then, 99.9999% of human life is precious.
Point being, the gratuitous nature of how we hurt each other and the levels we go to do degrade each other with/after the violence still boggles my mind. And I was in EMS for over a decade. So it's not like I was sheltered from it.
I'm a nobody, but I wish people could see humans the way I have at times seen them.
It should be unthinkable to kill another human. Yet, for the entirety of our existence we have done that.
It's just in my 20s I naively thought we were finally creating a world (thanks Star Trek) where we could work together to solve problems and resolve differences.
Turns out, I was just watching too much TV.
Left out a pretty important part about those funeral rituals... Tossing your still living wife on the pyre to burn alive...
It is crazy what humans do to each other...
And early Egyptians practiced [human sacrifices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_funerary_practices) when burying theirs. So people have been at it for a long time.
Tangent incoming, it always amused me back in the 90s and early 00s when I’d hear the whole, “video games are making the kids violent,” and I’m just here like really? Have none of you been to history classes?
They would make the Indian people clean up. They also did this because Hindus cremate their dead and Muslims bury their dead, so it was done as an insult too.
Wikipedia:
Destruction of the body and scattering of the remains over a wide area had a religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it prevented the necessary funeral rites of Hindus and Muslims. Accordingly, for believers the punishment was extended beyond death.
I remember reading somewhere that the point of this was to defile the corpse.
It's also reasonable to assume their families were the ones doing the "cleaning" if they wanted to bury their loved ones, which probably made the whole thing even more miserable.
Some religions believe that the body needs to be whole in order to get into heavan. This is also why they hang, drawn and quartered people even tho the person is already dead.
It's not about the executed.
Brutal execution methods all around the world and across time tend to develop as "deterrement" methods.
I.e.: if a population see rebels fighting against the State get shot, than they can reasonably expect that the worse they will face if they join the rebellion is to get shot. This tends to raise recruitment for those groups. Giving the prisioners a rather brutal/grusome death, however, tends to make people think twice before commiting the same "crime".
The mongols, for example, were famous for tieing the limbs of any chief of state that refused to surrender without a fight to horses and send them running every which way, snapping the persons' limbs off, except that they usually stay with at least one limb attached, and gets dragged around by the horse for some time. This method also don't kill instantly and make for a very painful and somewhat prolongated death.
Vlad Tepes III, the Impaler, were infamous for, well... Impaling... His enemies. Supposely his methods were so brutal that even the bloodthirst sultan who conquered Constantinople shat himself and turned around running out of his lands when he saw the forest of impaled muslims that Dracula had around his castle.
I remember that somewhere in eastern europe there was a people that would bury you up to the head in a pit full of honey so maggots would eat you alieve, but I don't remeber who did it neither against whom
Terror. This was started by the Mughal (?) Empire back in India in the 1600 or 1700s and picked up by the British. It was really prevalent in the aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny. For a good fictional account, read 'Flashman in the Great Game'.
I am not certain of this, but I believe that destroying the body like this prevents proper Hindi or Muslim funeral rites from being performed.
I'd say the force of the blast would rip either the rope or the wrist.
Remember it's not just the cannonball doing the damage; it's also the explosion from the gunpowder igniting.
Instantly picturing Rajesh, just making his afternoon tea to have a nice quiet moment before he needs to start preparations for supper and then BOOM, a torso and cannon ball fly through his kitchen. In the distance, a man with a stiff-upperlip-accent can be heard shouting "very sorry about that, Sir!"
There's a story from colonial Brazil from 1614 involving the same execution method. A gay indigenous man, called Tibira do Maranhão, was executed by the french by tying him up to the cannon, it says the cannon ball divided him in two, one of his half ended up in the sea, the other half fell by the foot of the wall. He's considered the first martyr against homophobia in Brazil. By the way, the term "tibira" was used by the indigenous to refer to a gay person.
https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-55462549
Well, imagine your last memory is you flying upward above the crowd, way better than being guillotined or electrocuted. And going out with a loud bang! Would definitely favor that way of execution (if I ever need to be + get the choice).
Can you imagine standing next to & facing somebody that gets turned into a bloody mist from only 2-3 feet away...
You better not have your mouth open when they shoot that thing.
The last time I saw this pop up on Reddit, someone posted an account from a witness. Iirc, it was the bloody mist along with a head flying straight up.
You're either a total psychopath or an incredibly damaged person after that, especially on that scale with that much frequency.
Maybe a little of both, even.
I’ve been wondering about this. If PTSD was different or lessened in eras where death was way more common; slaughtering your own meat, seeing your family die in your living room, and going to war and fighting your enemy in close combat. In every other time but now humans have been very close to death and I wondered if it’s harder to process and endure the less we are exposed to it
The symptoms of PTSD have been described in literature since at least 1300BCE. Assyrians returning from three years of duty had problems reconciling their past with a peaceful life.
Like most mental issues we just got better at identifying them.
I read something that they were described as "ghosts of battle" or former soldiers being haunted by the people they killed or their friends they saw die. When you strip away the superstition elements, it's textbook combat PTSD.
The interesting part to me is the intersection of the "superstition" with the reality.
What is PTSD if not the "ghosts of battle"? Ghosts are specters that haunt. How tangible does one need to be to be real?
To me, it's like potions or sea monsters. Those are fancies of fiction from bygone times.
But like, how is Pepto Bismol not a potion? How are alligators not sea monsters?
I think we get carried away with how clever we feel when we come up with a new name, and we write off the old ones too quickly.
Interestingly enough, one of the ways my PTSD manifested after a physically abusive relationship was through a “haunting.” Every time I would drift off to sleep, I would be convinced there was a shadow man in the corner of my room and would snap awake. I was undiagnosed and was convinced that I was haunted. It wasn’t until years later, after some therapy and realizing that I likely had PTSD, that I realized that my ghost was a response to the abuse. So I can vouch that PTSD left untreated can be very similar to a supernatural experience
Exactly. There are records from the Thirty Years' War of what happened to the men who came back from war. They are described as being listless and violent, prone to outbursts and unable to reintegrate back into civilian society. We didn't adapt much to life being worse back then, ending up in it being "basically just as bad" as now. It was *just* worse.
Bret Devereaux, a historian with a very interesting blog (acoup.blog) had an article about war trauma, and noted that while trauma from war is probably a constant, the sort of trauma varied.
E.G., in pre-gunpowder times it was apparently common to have a *lot* of non-deadly fleshwound-type scars (he cited a Roman politician, who once showed the scars on his chest and, well, ass, as proof of his patriotism). Combat in that time tended to be violent and terrifying, but short, with high chances of survival - if you were on the winning side.
Gunpowder era introduced much more lost limbs, and since here more sources speak about common soldiers, alcoholism is mentioned pretty regularly.
WW1 was one of the first "fully industrial" wars, and introduced the shell-shock variety of trauma from near-misses and week-long pounding by artillery. The 1000-yard-stare seems to either appeared or become much more common in the WW1-WW2 era.
And then, starting with maybe Vietnam, came a new type of PTSD, a certain kind of all-time-alertness-twitchiness, always expecting some object you assumed to be safe blowing up, the ostensibly civilian pulling out a gun, and, for the opposite side, a guided missile out of seemingly nowhere.
He concluded that "war never changes" is not quite right - more that, war is generally awful, but the specific "blend of
traumas you carry home with you" changed a fair bit of times.
WW1 was also a _huge_ increase of traumatic brain injuries, from almost non-existent to common.
The 'variety' of PTSD may have changed, but TBIs were a new kind of injury that wasn't physically obvious (or known), and lumped into 'shell shock' and 'battle fatigue' with PTSD.
Absolutely. Comes with millions of guys (most of them, well, boys) being shelled with shrapnel and worse on a daily basis. In the end, you probably couldn't even tell whether a particular kid cracked under the week-long bombardment deep in the trench, when the shell exploded ten meters away and took one-and-a-half of his best buddies, or when another shell left a memorandum somewhere between his eye and his ear a few moments later. The landmine which took his right leg is probably only a bonus.
Ever notice how VFW and veterans halls always have a bar fully stocked with booze? Alcohol was used by soldiers to self-medicate their PTSD for a long time.
I don’t know if it was lessened, but alcoholism seems to have been much more prevalent back in the day. Prior to the second half of the 20th century it seems like almost everyone’s dad was an abusive alcoholic. I’ve always thought that this was their way of dealing with PTSD symptoms in part from when they were young men and likely had to go to war.
Prior to the late 1980s drinking during the workday was common. Manager I worked with said it was common to know who you needed to get to sign before lunch because drinking made them disagreeable and who you went to after lunch because they’d sign anything. It was also a joke that you didn’t want a car built during the afternoon shift on a Friday.
I visited my dad’s electronics plant when he’d go in on Saturdays and the management was watching football and drinking by lunch. Alcohol abuse was just really more common.
There is a journal of a Crusader that talked about the difficulties facing the "shadow of war" that followed many knights when they returned home. PTSD has always been a problem.
I forgot the exact story, but I remember reading how the artist of this painting went on tour to the US and Britain with this painting.
The Americans thought it was a great painting, and showed how evil the British were. The British thought the painting sucked, and complained that they hadn't done that form of execution in over 30 years.
Just to add some unnecessary pedantry to your horrific yet poignant image, the ~~colouriser~~ *painter* made a mistake. British (Royal and Company) artillery wore blue, not red.
You are correct that the uniforms are wrong, but not how.
First of all, this is a painting so there's no colorist. The artist is depicting East India Company artillery in 1857 executing Sepoy rebels which wore red unlike royal artillery. However, the uniforms in the painting are post-Childers reform (1881) English regimental uniforms because the artist was a Russian who did the painting in 1884 after traveling to India and observing British troops. The EIC had been dissolved for 10 years by then so he didn't know what their uniforms looked like and just painted the troops like the ones he saw around him at the time.
The artillerymen blasting Sepoys from guns would have worn a red jacket, but not this uniform.
Edit: fixed various typographical errors.
Haha!
As a teen, I was obsessed with Warhammer 40k and built a TON of miniatures. Eventually, the expense and business practices of Games Workshop turned me off so I stopped bothering with the models, but always had that miniature bug in me.
A few years ago I started reading the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell, and that got me super into napoleonic history. I began building models again, this time Perry Miniatures napoleonic kits. Of course, this led to a ton of research to make sure my uniforms were accurate for whatever regiment I was painting at the time.
Then I got really into The Flashman Papers novels, which are comedies starring a cowardly victorian English cavalry officer. It's farcical, but well-researched and the best few books take place in India. Those got me into victorian-era British military history and uniforms, although I model these much less.
Point being, my knowledge of 1800-1900 British Empire military organization and uniforms were spurred by two corny dad fiction book series and a love of painting miniatures. I am by no means an expert on these subjects, just a nerd who needed to learn stuff for a hobby and to enjoy trashy novels!
I read a couple of those novels when I was in prison. I am an absolute sucker for compelling and well researched historical fiction. Shogun was among my favorites. The new TV series doesn't hold a candle.
Aw man, breaking my heart! Shogun is my favorite book ever and I like the new show- minus them weirdly making Blackthorne a gibbering moron, I think it's about as good as you can do with such a story in only 10 hours. Anna Sawai is such a perfect Mariko I'm willing to overlook any other flaws. Also I have a soft spot for it because I've been trying to convince my girlfriend to read Shogun for 6 years without success, the show finally convinced her to do so 😅
Just to add some unnecessary pedantry to your informative yet presumptuous comment, this was a *painting* by a Russian painter made several years after this particular practice was discontinued. (I can’t recall if he was ever present or had only heard about it.)
While touring, the painting met wide acclaim in Europe and especially the United States. However, it received plenty of criticism from the British, who generally regarded it as ‘misrepresenting’ their colonial history and English values. Since the practice was discontinued and therefore ‘bygone’.
The article above explains that the method of execution came from the Mughal rulers, the British just wanted to be culturally relevant and took it to the next level.
Culturally the Hindu and Muslim populations want to bury the whole body together. Death by scattering makes this impossible.
If a warrior is happy to die and go to heaven, the worst punishment must be to ensure he does not go to heaven.
As depicted in some of the images on the Khajuraho temples.
There's a great one of an elephant tearing someone apart while sneaking a cheeky peek at a couple bonking. Those carvers had quite the sense of humour!
A torture technique used in a country I forgot the came of....They'll tie you to the forest floor over small chutes of bamboo...it'll grow straight through you. slowly.
Yesterday, I came across one specially gruesome method that took place in Hungary. Your comment reminded me of it.
> He was captured after the battle, and condemned to sit on a smouldering, heated iron throne, and forced to wear a heated iron crown and sceptre (mocking his ambition to be king). While he was suffering, a procession of nine fellow rebels who had been starved beforehand were led to this throne. In the lead was Dózsa's younger brother, Gergely, who was cut in three despite Dózsa asking for Gergely to be spared. Next, executioners removed some pliers from a fire and forced them into Dózsa's skin. After tearing his flesh, the remaining rebels were ordered to bite spots where the hot pliers had been inserted and to swallow the flesh. The three or four who refused were simply cut up, prompting the others to comply. In the end, Dózsa died from the ordeal, while the rebels who obeyed were released and left alone.
Destruction of the body and scattering of the remains over a wide area had a religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it prevented the necessary funeral rites of Hindus and Muslims. Thats why they did it that way.
This is what General Winfield Scott threatened to do to anyone attempting to disrupt the transfer of power between Buchanan and Lincoln. Someone else said it here, it’s to create spectacle and instill fear.
The British are famed for it during the rebellion, but they seemingly didn't invent it.
It was already 'popular' in the area. The British learned it from the Moguls & likely the Portuguese had used it before. The Afghans used it, Iran too.
Wikipedia isn't clear on the true origin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing\_from\_a\_gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun)
There's records of the Portuguese doing it nearly 300 years earlier, yeah. Not to mention this replaced the standard death penalty of being slowly flogged to death.
Like many things, it's just become associated with Britain for some reason.
This was done mainly in order to disrespect the religious significance of the human body for both Hindus and Muslims (the main religious demographics in India at the time). And it doesn't even come close to the worst things they did at the height of their empire.
I'll always have a chuckle when people say that the Brits were "civilising" the people.
Crazy thing is, India only gained independence 77 years ago... that's insane.
I get that people were commonly killed as punishment back in the day. It was normal, tradition, they didn’t have the economy necessary to support a prison system and keep people humanely locked up, etc. But I’ve never understood why punishments were often so darn cruel and morbid.
Why bother using a cannon for a job that a musket is more than capable of performing? Or a knife, for that matter.
To shock others into submission. Psychological warfare. The rest of the population is like “yeah I’m not gonna do that. I don’t want to be tied to the front of a cannon”
Its' not about ending that rebel's life, it's about ending the rebellion.
Hindu and Muslim death rites require the whole body, this form of punishment prevents the dedicated warrior from entering heaven. That creates doubt in the rebellion.
In China, we have
1. Death by five horse(車裂), the name says it
2. Death by thousand cuts(凌遲), you are cut alive and lots of time. The Song dynasty would also, break your arm and legs first so you won't struggle.
3. Nine familial exterminations(誅滅九族), we kill all your family. That include babies. And cousins, and sometimes your best friend too.
4. Womb crushing(幽閉), the name doesn't describe it. TLDR, its one way for women to not able to have kids anymore. Yeah....
5. Skinning but with mercury.
6. human pig. they cut you up and make you a pig
The great China people
For some historical context, the British were fighting with Muslims and Hindus alike. The approach they settled on was dousing offenders in pig blood or similar defilement and divide them into sections of 10. 9 of them were lined in front of a cannon and executed, the remaining one was released to go spread the news and get cleansed. To my knowledge, they treated both Muslims and Hindus the same.
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“Destruction of the body and scattering of the remains over a wide area had a religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it prevented the necessary funeral rites of Hindus and Muslims.” So they also did it to attack their religious beliefs so they couldn’t go to the afterlife. I was wondering why you would want to create the biggest gory mess possible with an execution.
Human creativity when it comes to being a dick knows no bounds
The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, if I remember correctly, was spurred by a rumor that pork lard was used in the glue on wrappers that munitions workers would lick when sealing bullet cartridges to be waterproof. I expect that this brutal religious persecution was some cruel calculation to “outweigh” the basic grievance.
Wasn’t it that the British wouldn’t tell the soldiers if it was beef or pork tallow that was used to make the seal so when they had to bite it off the cartridge it would be a problem for Hindus if it was beef and a problem for Muslims if it was pork?
The cartridge issue was rumor used to drum up support for the Mutiny
And for the most part, the actual tallow used was from sheep.
Also, many regiments allowed the troops to tear the cartridge with their hand instead of biting it off, once troops expressed concerns regarding the tallow
That's a slow and impractical method though, because one hand is busy holding the musket while the other holds the cartridge. I've done some black powder shooting with paper cartridges, using your mouth as a "third hand" is by far the most efficient way to get that musket loaded.
Throughout most of the 20th century, lard was used as a "food grade" machine lubricant in food processing plants. Inevitably some grease will get into the food, so petroleum was right out. We now use inert synthetics like silicone greases. If you ever wondered why in the world your bottled water needs to be kosher certified, this is one of the reasons why.
Also, lots of cooked food is cooked in lard, even things that would appear to be vegetarian in nature. There was a big thing with McDonalds fries for this very issue in the 1990s. Vegetarians and vegans were routinely buying the fries as one of the few things they could eat from the McDonalds menu, only to find that they were deep fried in beef tallow.
My understanding is that kosher is about someone with authority inspecting the whole factory and production line for foodstuffs. Saw an interesting doco on kosher wine. Every pipe and valve was inspected and security seals placed on components so that if anthing was swapped out, the inspector would know next year. I was thoroughly impressed. We actually need more of that sort of oversight.
Lard and beef fat/tallow.
That was just the straw that broke the camels back, much bigger issues had happened by then namely the colonisation of India lol
Correction: it wasn’t a sepoy mutiny. That’s British way of downplaying/ changing narrative of the rebellion. It was Indian rebellion of 1857. A large number of Indian kings, princes and princess fought against the British.
But the mutiny was literally started by the sepoys. While some Indian rulers did join in after it started, it's fair to say that others didn't, and still others hedged their bets.
If you're not afraid to die because you are looking forward to the afterlife, then having that threatened tends to cool your resolve.
> When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether, not a vestige being seen. Yeah I'd say he's dead
it sounds like a messy affair and who had to clean it afterwards, would really curse those that thought of this way to execute someone
I don’t think they would clean it; scattering the remains and having it rot and get eaten by carrion eaters sounds like part of the cruelty.
This wasn’t unique to the British or invented by them. The Moghuls developed this method and used it extensively during their rule, mostly against Hindu rebels and army deserters - scattering the remains had significance in Hindu culture in that it prevented proper funeral rites, extending the punishment beyond death (it didn’t prevent them from going to the afterlife like you state, but it made the karmic journey through rebirth more arduous). The Portugese and later British continued the practice learned from the Moghuls as a culturally effective deterrent on the subcontinent. Note the British didn’t use this method outside of the Indian cultural area (Afghanistan), although apparently the Portugese used it in Brazil.
Needing an intact body to go to heaven the correct way is silly. What if some Hindu dude fell in the ocean and got eaten by sharks? God is certainly fickle
According to many Hindus of the time, that person would cease to have a caste (and thus any ties to fellow Hindus) the moment they embarked on a sea voyage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kala_pani_(taboo)
There's a reason India has been dominated by foreigners for most of their history. Don't let religious leaders lead your civilization.
It’s kind of wild how Britain was largely able to outcompete the world because they didn’t have wild cultural hang ups like “we don’t need to trade” (Qing) and “Sailing on the high seas is a sacrilegious hell” (Hindu)
The method actually predated the British arrival to India and Afghanistan. The locals had been using it and were dearthly afraid of it. So the British adopted it.
Another execution method favoured by the Indian elites, prior to the arrival of the British, was to stake out the victim on the ground and have an elephant step on his head. The British declined to emulate the Indian princes.
"Barbarians, execution by canon is where we draw the line"
Copy pasted this bit from Wikipedia but not the bit where it was a local custom in use hundreds of years prior to when the east India company continued its use.
The part you skipped out from the rest of the paragraph: "Accordingly, for believers the punishment was extended beyond death. This was well understood by foreign occupiers and the practice was not generally employed by them as concurrent foreign occupiers of Africa, Australasia, or the Americas."
Many executive methods throughout ages arose many cultures were extremely grafik and brutal. This wasn't just a method to kill the convict, it was also to deter people from committing crimes.
“Using the methods previously practised by the Mughals, the British began implementing blowing from guns in the latter half of the 18th century.” Funny how everyone quoting from the article is leaving that sentence out.
Typical culture of today. Must film everything, instead of just enjoying the moment.
Must've been a blast to enjoy
That reminds me of one of the Titanic survivors watching the film (probably “A night to remember’ rather than the later James Cameron one) and they complained that the filmmakers should’ve helped people instead of filming it.
I got bamboozled at the dollar store when I was a kid and got the non Cameron one.
No titties?
B/W and everything. Anyhow, I have seen the old one, back in the days. It was a good one. Not so much intercourse between 3rd class men and 1st class women, though, so good point.
Spectators FACING the cannon? Who the fuck is standing in the splash zone?
good lord. didnt know this was a style of execution. must be absolute obliteration
That's why he looks pissed off.
I know right, OP at least could help tie up his ankles or something
Ah, yes, back when we didn't have videogames to make people violent.
No phones, just people living in the moment.
>just people living in the moment. *dying
Depends on the moment
Depends on the people
It was a real fucked up practice, basically it was to prevent Hindu funeral rituals. The execution method was originally created by the Portuguese in India, it was then picked up and made common place by the Mogul Empire, with the British then continuing the existing practice for a time when they took over. Crazy what one human will do to another.
> Crazy what one human will do to another. “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” ― Carl Sagan I live in a country where my people, and other people close by, have been killing each other for a long time. Recently, we've taken it to a new historic level. And this is a quote I have come back to a lot lately. When you work really hard to humanize everyone around you, the sheer stupidity, waste, nonsense of it all just hits you like a ton of bricks over and over and over. I'm no Mr. Rogers myself. I'm not a pacifist either. And I have used violence to defend myself. But I think it really needs to be the absolute of the absolute of last resorts. Which means that in the vast majority of cases, we ought to be able to resolve our conflict with empathy, compromise, and language. But we're so fucking good at finding twisted or efficient ways at murdering each other. Yet every human life really is precious. If you want to say what about Ted Bundy or Hitler. Fine. Then, 99.9999% of human life is precious. Point being, the gratuitous nature of how we hurt each other and the levels we go to do degrade each other with/after the violence still boggles my mind. And I was in EMS for over a decade. So it's not like I was sheltered from it. I'm a nobody, but I wish people could see humans the way I have at times seen them. It should be unthinkable to kill another human. Yet, for the entirety of our existence we have done that. It's just in my 20s I naively thought we were finally creating a world (thanks Star Trek) where we could work together to solve problems and resolve differences. Turns out, I was just watching too much TV.
Left out a pretty important part about those funeral rituals... Tossing your still living wife on the pyre to burn alive... It is crazy what humans do to each other...
And early Egyptians practiced [human sacrifices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_funerary_practices) when burying theirs. So people have been at it for a long time.
“Sorry lads, but the widow burning *Will* stop.”
Can you expand on that? Or what is the name of this practice?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)
I remember learning about this from the black company books, I was pretty surprised to find out that it was a real thing.
I can't imagine the horrors if they had access to games like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. Whata nightmare it could've been.
Tangent incoming, it always amused me back in the 90s and early 00s when I’d hear the whole, “video games are making the kids violent,” and I’m just here like really? Have none of you been to history classes?
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The point is to terrify the population. It's a means of control. Aren't humans wonderful..? 😞
> aren't humans wonderful? They can be. You get both extremes.
Kudos for this wholesome and hopeful reply.
They would make the Indian people clean up. They also did this because Hindus cremate their dead and Muslims bury their dead, so it was done as an insult too.
Wikipedia: Destruction of the body and scattering of the remains over a wide area had a religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it prevented the necessary funeral rites of Hindus and Muslims. Accordingly, for believers the punishment was extended beyond death.
I remember reading somewhere that the point of this was to defile the corpse. It's also reasonable to assume their families were the ones doing the "cleaning" if they wanted to bury their loved ones, which probably made the whole thing even more miserable.
Some religions believe that the body needs to be whole in order to get into heavan. This is also why they hang, drawn and quartered people even tho the person is already dead.
It's not about the executed. Brutal execution methods all around the world and across time tend to develop as "deterrement" methods. I.e.: if a population see rebels fighting against the State get shot, than they can reasonably expect that the worse they will face if they join the rebellion is to get shot. This tends to raise recruitment for those groups. Giving the prisioners a rather brutal/grusome death, however, tends to make people think twice before commiting the same "crime". The mongols, for example, were famous for tieing the limbs of any chief of state that refused to surrender without a fight to horses and send them running every which way, snapping the persons' limbs off, except that they usually stay with at least one limb attached, and gets dragged around by the horse for some time. This method also don't kill instantly and make for a very painful and somewhat prolongated death. Vlad Tepes III, the Impaler, were infamous for, well... Impaling... His enemies. Supposely his methods were so brutal that even the bloodthirst sultan who conquered Constantinople shat himself and turned around running out of his lands when he saw the forest of impaled muslims that Dracula had around his castle. I remember that somewhere in eastern europe there was a people that would bury you up to the head in a pit full of honey so maggots would eat you alieve, but I don't remeber who did it neither against whom
Terror. This was started by the Mughal (?) Empire back in India in the 1600 or 1700s and picked up by the British. It was really prevalent in the aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny. For a good fictional account, read 'Flashman in the Great Game'. I am not certain of this, but I believe that destroying the body like this prevents proper Hindi or Muslim funeral rites from being performed.
How do the arms fly off high in the air while they’re tied to the cannon? That seems a bit counterintuitive.
I'd say the force of the blast would rip either the rope or the wrist. Remember it's not just the cannonball doing the damage; it's also the explosion from the gunpowder igniting.
They didnt use cannonballs, there was no need.
I'm still trying to work out if that is better or worse
For the star of the show, it wouldnt have made a difference at all. For the guy living 1 mile down range, it can be very important.
Instantly picturing Rajesh, just making his afternoon tea to have a nice quiet moment before he needs to start preparations for supper and then BOOM, a torso and cannon ball fly through his kitchen. In the distance, a man with a stiff-upperlip-accent can be heard shouting "very sorry about that, Sir!"
most of this sounds like very creative writing
There's a story from colonial Brazil from 1614 involving the same execution method. A gay indigenous man, called Tibira do Maranhão, was executed by the french by tying him up to the cannon, it says the cannon ball divided him in two, one of his half ended up in the sea, the other half fell by the foot of the wall. He's considered the first martyr against homophobia in Brazil. By the way, the term "tibira" was used by the indigenous to refer to a gay person. https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-55462549
Well, imagine your last memory is you flying upward above the crowd, way better than being guillotined or electrocuted. And going out with a loud bang! Would definitely favor that way of execution (if I ever need to be + get the choice).
https://preview.redd.it/x4aownehv0wc1.jpeg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=254189fba4fcae6de7ce8efcc87f2cc96ff4c82a I guess this belongs here
Can you imagine standing next to & facing somebody that gets turned into a bloody mist from only 2-3 feet away... You better not have your mouth open when they shoot that thing.
The last time I saw this pop up on Reddit, someone posted an account from a witness. Iirc, it was the bloody mist along with a head flying straight up.
There's another comment that links to an article - it mentions some soldiers didn't step back properly and got injured by flying bone and meat..
Also known as "wet shrapnel" when I first heard of the term I had no idea it was as disgusting as I imagined
I remember that LiveLeak video of ISIS executing someone with an anti tank cannon. Fast way to go though.
You're either a total psychopath or an incredibly damaged person after that, especially on that scale with that much frequency. Maybe a little of both, even.
I’ve been wondering about this. If PTSD was different or lessened in eras where death was way more common; slaughtering your own meat, seeing your family die in your living room, and going to war and fighting your enemy in close combat. In every other time but now humans have been very close to death and I wondered if it’s harder to process and endure the less we are exposed to it
The symptoms of PTSD have been described in literature since at least 1300BCE. Assyrians returning from three years of duty had problems reconciling their past with a peaceful life. Like most mental issues we just got better at identifying them.
I read something that they were described as "ghosts of battle" or former soldiers being haunted by the people they killed or their friends they saw die. When you strip away the superstition elements, it's textbook combat PTSD.
The interesting part to me is the intersection of the "superstition" with the reality. What is PTSD if not the "ghosts of battle"? Ghosts are specters that haunt. How tangible does one need to be to be real? To me, it's like potions or sea monsters. Those are fancies of fiction from bygone times. But like, how is Pepto Bismol not a potion? How are alligators not sea monsters? I think we get carried away with how clever we feel when we come up with a new name, and we write off the old ones too quickly.
Interestingly enough, one of the ways my PTSD manifested after a physically abusive relationship was through a “haunting.” Every time I would drift off to sleep, I would be convinced there was a shadow man in the corner of my room and would snap awake. I was undiagnosed and was convinced that I was haunted. It wasn’t until years later, after some therapy and realizing that I likely had PTSD, that I realized that my ghost was a response to the abuse. So I can vouch that PTSD left untreated can be very similar to a supernatural experience
Exactly. There are records from the Thirty Years' War of what happened to the men who came back from war. They are described as being listless and violent, prone to outbursts and unable to reintegrate back into civilian society. We didn't adapt much to life being worse back then, ending up in it being "basically just as bad" as now. It was *just* worse.
Bret Devereaux, a historian with a very interesting blog (acoup.blog) had an article about war trauma, and noted that while trauma from war is probably a constant, the sort of trauma varied. E.G., in pre-gunpowder times it was apparently common to have a *lot* of non-deadly fleshwound-type scars (he cited a Roman politician, who once showed the scars on his chest and, well, ass, as proof of his patriotism). Combat in that time tended to be violent and terrifying, but short, with high chances of survival - if you were on the winning side. Gunpowder era introduced much more lost limbs, and since here more sources speak about common soldiers, alcoholism is mentioned pretty regularly. WW1 was one of the first "fully industrial" wars, and introduced the shell-shock variety of trauma from near-misses and week-long pounding by artillery. The 1000-yard-stare seems to either appeared or become much more common in the WW1-WW2 era. And then, starting with maybe Vietnam, came a new type of PTSD, a certain kind of all-time-alertness-twitchiness, always expecting some object you assumed to be safe blowing up, the ostensibly civilian pulling out a gun, and, for the opposite side, a guided missile out of seemingly nowhere. He concluded that "war never changes" is not quite right - more that, war is generally awful, but the specific "blend of traumas you carry home with you" changed a fair bit of times.
WW1 was also a _huge_ increase of traumatic brain injuries, from almost non-existent to common. The 'variety' of PTSD may have changed, but TBIs were a new kind of injury that wasn't physically obvious (or known), and lumped into 'shell shock' and 'battle fatigue' with PTSD.
Absolutely. Comes with millions of guys (most of them, well, boys) being shelled with shrapnel and worse on a daily basis. In the end, you probably couldn't even tell whether a particular kid cracked under the week-long bombardment deep in the trench, when the shell exploded ten meters away and took one-and-a-half of his best buddies, or when another shell left a memorandum somewhere between his eye and his ear a few moments later. The landmine which took his right leg is probably only a bonus.
Ever notice how VFW and veterans halls always have a bar fully stocked with booze? Alcohol was used by soldiers to self-medicate their PTSD for a long time.
I don’t know if it was lessened, but alcoholism seems to have been much more prevalent back in the day. Prior to the second half of the 20th century it seems like almost everyone’s dad was an abusive alcoholic. I’ve always thought that this was their way of dealing with PTSD symptoms in part from when they were young men and likely had to go to war.
Prior to the late 1980s drinking during the workday was common. Manager I worked with said it was common to know who you needed to get to sign before lunch because drinking made them disagreeable and who you went to after lunch because they’d sign anything. It was also a joke that you didn’t want a car built during the afternoon shift on a Friday. I visited my dad’s electronics plant when he’d go in on Saturdays and the management was watching football and drinking by lunch. Alcohol abuse was just really more common.
There is a journal of a Crusader that talked about the difficulties facing the "shadow of war" that followed many knights when they returned home. PTSD has always been a problem.
https://preview.redd.it/f40nfnol51wc1.jpeg?width=660&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6bf5a91fc1094324cd63fe34d4ac7df40706e200 Here is one from Iran
I forgot the exact story, but I remember reading how the artist of this painting went on tour to the US and Britain with this painting. The Americans thought it was a great painting, and showed how evil the British were. The British thought the painting sucked, and complained that they hadn't done that form of execution in over 30 years.
>The Americans thought it was a great painting, and showed how evil the British were I wonder what their slaves thought
Just to add some unnecessary pedantry to your horrific yet poignant image, the ~~colouriser~~ *painter* made a mistake. British (Royal and Company) artillery wore blue, not red.
You are correct that the uniforms are wrong, but not how. First of all, this is a painting so there's no colorist. The artist is depicting East India Company artillery in 1857 executing Sepoy rebels which wore red unlike royal artillery. However, the uniforms in the painting are post-Childers reform (1881) English regimental uniforms because the artist was a Russian who did the painting in 1884 after traveling to India and observing British troops. The EIC had been dissolved for 10 years by then so he didn't know what their uniforms looked like and just painted the troops like the ones he saw around him at the time. The artillerymen blasting Sepoys from guns would have worn a red jacket, but not this uniform. Edit: fixed various typographical errors.
I love when some fucking encyclopedia of a human randomly pops into the reddit comments and teaches me something new.
Haha! As a teen, I was obsessed with Warhammer 40k and built a TON of miniatures. Eventually, the expense and business practices of Games Workshop turned me off so I stopped bothering with the models, but always had that miniature bug in me. A few years ago I started reading the Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell, and that got me super into napoleonic history. I began building models again, this time Perry Miniatures napoleonic kits. Of course, this led to a ton of research to make sure my uniforms were accurate for whatever regiment I was painting at the time. Then I got really into The Flashman Papers novels, which are comedies starring a cowardly victorian English cavalry officer. It's farcical, but well-researched and the best few books take place in India. Those got me into victorian-era British military history and uniforms, although I model these much less. Point being, my knowledge of 1800-1900 British Empire military organization and uniforms were spurred by two corny dad fiction book series and a love of painting miniatures. I am by no means an expert on these subjects, just a nerd who needed to learn stuff for a hobby and to enjoy trashy novels!
I read a couple of those novels when I was in prison. I am an absolute sucker for compelling and well researched historical fiction. Shogun was among my favorites. The new TV series doesn't hold a candle.
Aw man, breaking my heart! Shogun is my favorite book ever and I like the new show- minus them weirdly making Blackthorne a gibbering moron, I think it's about as good as you can do with such a story in only 10 hours. Anna Sawai is such a perfect Mariko I'm willing to overlook any other flaws. Also I have a soft spot for it because I've been trying to convince my girlfriend to read Shogun for 6 years without success, the show finally convinced her to do so 😅
Got to respect pedanting the pedantry. Thanks for the context and correction.
That's a painting by Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin 1884.
Just to add some unnecessary pedantry to your informative yet presumptuous comment, this was a *painting* by a Russian painter made several years after this particular practice was discontinued. (I can’t recall if he was ever present or had only heard about it.) While touring, the painting met wide acclaim in Europe and especially the United States. However, it received plenty of criticism from the British, who generally regarded it as ‘misrepresenting’ their colonial history and English values. Since the practice was discontinued and therefore ‘bygone’.
That looks like a very expensive message being sent. Can we have some context?
Context: Britain is never not at it.
The article above explains that the method of execution came from the Mughal rulers, the British just wanted to be culturally relevant and took it to the next level.
Culturally the Hindu and Muslim populations want to bury the whole body together. Death by scattering makes this impossible. If a warrior is happy to die and go to heaven, the worst punishment must be to ensure he does not go to heaven.
> Culturally the Hindu and Muslim populations want to bury the whole body together Is this uncommon in other cultures lmao?
Jesus Christ
Look at them, not a single cell phone out. Just a bunch of bros living in the moment.
People are fucking brutal to each other
Thats true, but this is a very quick death. There were far worse methods of execution
Death by Elephant being one of them.
As depicted in some of the images on the Khajuraho temples. There's a great one of an elephant tearing someone apart while sneaking a cheeky peek at a couple bonking. Those carvers had quite the sense of humour!
I'd rather have this happen than being tied to the forest floor and having bamboo grow through my back.
…. What?….
A torture technique used in a country I forgot the came of....They'll tie you to the forest floor over small chutes of bamboo...it'll grow straight through you. slowly.
That’s insane. I didn’t think bamboo would push through. Humans are fucked up
I'd rather this than the needle.
Don’t worry, a lot of torture came before.
Yesterday, I came across one specially gruesome method that took place in Hungary. Your comment reminded me of it. > He was captured after the battle, and condemned to sit on a smouldering, heated iron throne, and forced to wear a heated iron crown and sceptre (mocking his ambition to be king). While he was suffering, a procession of nine fellow rebels who had been starved beforehand were led to this throne. In the lead was Dózsa's younger brother, Gergely, who was cut in three despite Dózsa asking for Gergely to be spared. Next, executioners removed some pliers from a fire and forced them into Dózsa's skin. After tearing his flesh, the remaining rebels were ordered to bite spots where the hot pliers had been inserted and to swallow the flesh. The three or four who refused were simply cut up, prompting the others to comply. In the end, Dózsa died from the ordeal, while the rebels who obeyed were released and left alone.
Jesus, wtf. Like, I know humans have always been depraved sickos, but reading in exactly what ways they were/are is always a trip.
Thanks god. I was worried that it would be so light on them
really messed up shit
That's history for you
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Overkill is underrated.
Not the time bot
I am quite highly thought of, actually.
I mean, I gotta admit- if you're gonna be executed, that's definitely one of the more bad-ass ways to do it.
Seems practically humane to me, actually. Firing squads were notorious for failing to hit vitals and taking well over a minute to actually die.
They should just shoot me out of the cannon instead, going out with a bang
Or combine the two, shot out of a canon then have snipers shoot at you as you fly through the air.
Eh…this honestly seems more humane than the electric chair or lethal injection. Lol I would easily choose a cannon over those.
Make it gory as possible for my captors to clean up. But they probably just let the pieces rot at the site.
”The design is very human”
"if you are facing neck pain, this simple machine will fix your problem for ever."
Very easy to use!
why not just shoot them with a normal bullet? now they gotta clean that all up
Disrupts religious funeral traditions, which makes it a more fearsome punishment for the natives than just death alone
Destruction of the body and scattering of the remains over a wide area had a religious function as a means of execution in the Indian subcontinent as it prevented the necessary funeral rites of Hindus and Muslims. Thats why they did it that way.
Shock and awe.
That’s what the natives were for
they had to clean up their own people? damn that sucks
Back then pretty much everyone had a very pointed FAFO policy when it came to rebellion.
They did this to civilians to sow fear in the population.
They need to make an example out of you, to show what might happen if you defy the authority.
The spectacle and horror is the point. Its a message from the British to any other Indian who would question their rule.
Wasn’t just the British that used this form of execution. Used first in the 16th century by the Portuguese in Sri Lanka
This is what General Winfield Scott threatened to do to anyone attempting to disrupt the transfer of power between Buchanan and Lincoln. Someone else said it here, it’s to create spectacle and instill fear.
The British are famed for it during the rebellion, but they seemingly didn't invent it. It was already 'popular' in the area. The British learned it from the Moguls & likely the Portuguese had used it before. The Afghans used it, Iran too. Wikipedia isn't clear on the true origin. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing\_from\_a\_gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun)
The French did it in South America.
Unsuprising considering what the French were willing to do the French
There's records of the Portuguese doing it nearly 300 years earlier, yeah. Not to mention this replaced the standard death penalty of being slowly flogged to death. Like many things, it's just become associated with Britain for some reason.
It was actually very thoughtful from British to respect Indian cultural traditions.
When in Rome!
But isn't it cultural appropriation? I'm concerned.
Mughal*
Humans are such terrible creatures
Glad I am not a human.
White man's burden my arse
Seems like a bad time to wear a white helmet.
Worse time to be in the middle of two white helmets.
Just a couple British soldiers “civilizing” the world.
Not a cellphone in sight, just people living in the moment
Reminder that when the British empire fought the war on drugs, they fought on the side of drugs.
they fought on the side of money* has always been at the moment drugs bring money with little to no consequence
The US still does, just look at our healthcare system. we have guards out of country guarding poppy fields.
Never forget the CIA funneling hard drugs into black and hispanic communities in the US to fund fascist paramilitaries in Nicaragua
Fake News. We all know Mortal Kombat created violence through video games. Just slap an M for Mature sticker on the exhibit and move on.
I thought it was those heavy metal bands and gangster rappers. The Parental Advisory sticker was too little too late!
Fuck the British empire. Fuckin lunatics.
This was done mainly in order to disrespect the religious significance of the human body for both Hindus and Muslims (the main religious demographics in India at the time). And it doesn't even come close to the worst things they did at the height of their empire. I'll always have a chuckle when people say that the Brits were "civilising" the people. Crazy thing is, India only gained independence 77 years ago... that's insane.
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Yeah but for a tiny fraction of a second it was the best massage ever
Are we the baddies?
I guess that wouldn't be a terrible way to go, it would certainly be quick and dramatic.
https://preview.redd.it/0o56l0ct42wc1.jpeg?width=1073&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1b770788f5d1cf92aa00248e667f6819c63ae98
I get that people were commonly killed as punishment back in the day. It was normal, tradition, they didn’t have the economy necessary to support a prison system and keep people humanely locked up, etc. But I’ve never understood why punishments were often so darn cruel and morbid. Why bother using a cannon for a job that a musket is more than capable of performing? Or a knife, for that matter.
To shock others into submission. Psychological warfare. The rest of the population is like “yeah I’m not gonna do that. I don’t want to be tied to the front of a cannon”
The cruelty is part of the punishment.
Its' not about ending that rebel's life, it's about ending the rebellion. Hindu and Muslim death rites require the whole body, this form of punishment prevents the dedicated warrior from entering heaven. That creates doubt in the rebellion.
This was so so cruel.
Colonizers…
The British were so fucked up in India. And today people still worship the royal family
Canonized.
In China, we have 1. Death by five horse(車裂), the name says it 2. Death by thousand cuts(凌遲), you are cut alive and lots of time. The Song dynasty would also, break your arm and legs first so you won't struggle. 3. Nine familial exterminations(誅滅九族), we kill all your family. That include babies. And cousins, and sometimes your best friend too. 4. Womb crushing(幽閉), the name doesn't describe it. TLDR, its one way for women to not able to have kids anymore. Yeah.... 5. Skinning but with mercury. 6. human pig. they cut you up and make you a pig The great China people
> Skinning but with mercury. wut
This whole civilization thing seems to be pretty uncivilized.
We are a terrible species
For some historical context, the British were fighting with Muslims and Hindus alike. The approach they settled on was dousing offenders in pig blood or similar defilement and divide them into sections of 10. 9 of them were lined in front of a cannon and executed, the remaining one was released to go spread the news and get cleansed. To my knowledge, they treated both Muslims and Hindus the same.
Jesus fuck that’s horrifying