II. THE GYPSY

“A people proscribed by opinion, and doomed by the laws to opprobrium and ignominy; a race which, driven from all liberal professions, has been for ages, and still is, robbed of its right to hold landed property; which, subjected to special and severe regulations, has learned at once to obey and yet to preserve a manner of independence; which, despite the contempt that it inspires and the hate that it awakes and the prejudices wherewith it is received and judged, still resists this contempt, this hatred, and finally all those causes which ought to disunite, loosen, and annihilate the family, the race, the nation;—such a people, I say, deserves the observer’s attention, if only from the fact of its existence.”

Jaubert de Passa.

TO THE READER

Of general works upon the subject of the Gypsies we have perhaps enough, and more than enough; this objection, however, cannot be urged against specialities, which still are highly desirable in every department of “Chinganology.” I use the latter term in preference to the French Tsiganologie, of which more presently, and the “Romanology,” a term of dubious import, lately introduced into English.

I wish to place in extenso before the public the following conclusions which the study of some years has, it is hoped, justified me in drawing with regard to the relation of the Gypsies and the Jats:

1. The mediæval Gypsies of Europe were the last wave of Aryan emigration that flowed westward during the early fifteenth century; and this wave was possibly preceded by more than one similar exodus.

2. The mediæval Gypsies show family resemblances, physical and moral, ethnological and linguistic, with the modern Jats, a highly important race, which extends from the mouth of the Indus to the head of the great Valley, thence ramifying over Turkistan and the far North.

3. There are solid reasons for believing the Jats and the Jin-tchi of Tatary to be the modern representatives of the classical Getæ and the Goths of later days.

4. The language of both tribes (Jat and Gypsy) is of Indo-Persian type, the Indian ingredient not being so much decomposed as in the modern varieties of Prakrit. An absolute isolation of speech, especial reasons for secrecy, and the fact of being oral and never written have preserved its purity among the Gypsies; while the Jats, in close contact with alien tongues, have made those secular linguistic changes which are familiar even to English and French.

5. The most ancient name of the race is Chingáneh, a term still used in Persia and Turkey, and necessarily corrupted by the Arabs, who have no ch, to Jingáneh.

6. Concerning the origin of the Gypsy article (o—os, a—as, etc.), which is unknown to both Sanskrit and Prakrit, the suit is still pending. Possibly it is original and peculiar to the dialect; more probably it is an European and especially a Greek innovation. Briefly, until we have grammatical and vocabularian sketches of the Central Asian and the Turkoman-Gypsy tongues, we are not in a position to draw conclusions.

I propose to discuss the Indian affinities of the Gypsies. I begin with a detailed critique of the various reviews proceeding from the prolific pen of M. Paul Bataillard, who claims the merit, such as it is, of having first identified the Gypsies and the Jats. I end with topographical notes on both tribes throughout their extension from the Indus to Morocco and even to the Brazil.

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Part I

NOTES ON MODERN STUDIES OF “CHINGANOLOGY”

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CHAPTER I

THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GYPSIES

The following letter to the Academy (March 27, 1875), which opened the discussion between M. Paul Bataillard and its author, speaks for itself[85]:

“In the Academy of February 27, 1875, I had these words:

“‘Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, has printed some interesting Contributions to the History of the Gipsies (sic). He accepts the view propounded by Pott,[86] as early as 1853, that the Gipsies are closely related to the Indian Jatt (a name which the Arab historians transform into Zott).... Dr. Trumpp[87] has already pointed out the close resemblance between the European Gipsies and the Jatt of the banks of the Indus.’

“I venture to hope that you will permit me to show the part taken by myself in this question.[88] Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus (London: Allen), my volume written between 1845 and 1849, and published in 1851, thus treats of the peoples of the plains:

“‘The Jat, or as others write the word, Jath, Juth, or Jutt, was, in the time of the Kalhorá dynasty, one of the ruling classes in Sindh. It was probably for this reason that the author of the Tohfat el Kirám (a well-known book of Sindhi Annals) made them of kindred origin with the Belochis, who now repudiate such an idea with disdain. The Jat’s account of his own descent gives to Ukayl, the companion of Muhammad, the high honour of being his progenitor; but what class of Muslim people, however vile, do not claim some equally high origin?

“As Játaki, the dialect peculiar to the people, proves, they (i.e. the Sindh division of this extensive race) must have come from the Panjáb, and the other districts Ubho or Báládasht, Jhang-Siyál, Multán, and other regions dependent upon the great Country of the Five Rivers. Driven by war or famine from their own lands, they migrated southwards to Sebi (Sibi or Siwi, Upper Sindh) and to the hills around it. They are supposed to have entered Sindh a little before the accession of the Kalhorá Princes, and shortly afterwards to have risen to distinction by their superior courage and personal strength. At present they have lost all that distinguished them, and of their multitude of Jágírdárs, Zemindárs, and Sardárs now not a single descendant possesses anything like wealth or rank. The principal settlements are in the provinces of Kakrálo, Játi, Chediyo, Maniyár, Phuláji, and Johí. [Those of Umarkot speak, it is said, a different dialect from the Indine Jats, and not a few migrating tribes graze their herds on the great Delta.[89]] They are generally agriculturists or breeders of camels, and appear to be a quiet, inoffensive race. Throughout the eastern parts of Central Asia, the name Jat is synonymous with thief and scoundrel.

“‘The Sindhi Jats have many different Kamus or clans, the principal of which are the following: Babbur, Bháti, Jiskáni, Kalaru, Magási, Mir-jat, Parhiyár, Sanjaráni, Siyál, and Solángi.’

“To this text were appended the following notes:

“Jat^u in the Sindhi dialect means: 1. A camel-driver or breeder. 2. The name of a Beloch clan. Generally in the lower Indus Valley it is written Jat^u, and pronounced Dyat^u. It has three significations: 1. The name of a tribe, the Jats. 2. A Sindhi, as opposed to a Beloch; it is in this sense an insulting expression, and so the Beloch and Brahins of the hills call the Sindhi language Játhki. 3. A word of insult, a ‘barbarian,’ as in the expression do-dasto Jat^u, ‘an utter savage.’

“Lt. Wood’s work shows that the Jats are still found in the Panjáb and all along the banks of the Indus.

“Under the name Jat no less than four races are comprised.

“I continued:

“‘It appears probable from the appearance and other peculiarities of the race that the Jats are connected by consanguinity with that peculiar race the Gypsies. Of 130 words used by the Gypsies in Syria, no less than 104 belong to the Indo-Persian class of language. The rest may be either the remains of the barbarous tongues spoken by the aboriginal mountaineers who inhabited the tract between the Indus and Eastern Persia, or the invention of a subsequent age, when their dispersion among hostile tribes rendered a “thieves’ language” necessary. The numerals are almost all pure Persian. There are two words, “kuri” (a house) and “psih” (a cat), probably corrupted from the Pushtu “kor” and “pishu.” Two other words are Sindhi “mánna” for “máni,” bread, and “húi” for “hú,” he. As might be expected from a tribe inhabiting Syria, Arabic and Turkish words occasionally occur, but they form no part of the groundwork of the language.’

“It was my fortune to wander far and wide, during four years of staff service, about the Valley of the Indus; and to make personal acquaintance with many, if not all, its wild tribes. I saw much of the Jats, lodged in their huts and tents, and studied the camel under their tuition. They are the best ‘Vets.’ and breeders known to that part of the Indian Empire. My kind friend, now no more, then Colonel, and afterwards General, Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, had a Jat in his service; and the rough old man’s peculiarities afforded us abundant diversion. Thus I was able to publish in 1849 the first known notice of Játaki and its literature. The author of the famous ‘Dabistan’[90] applies the term ‘Jat tongue’ to that in which Nánah Sháh, the Apostle of the Sikhs, composed his Grauth[91] and other works. Throughout the Panjáb Jatki bút (‘Jat tongue’) is synonymous with the Gunwár ki boli or ‘peasants’ jargon’ of Hindustan.

“I wrote the word Játaki with two italics. The first denotes the peculiar Sindhi sound, a blending of j and t; the second is the familiar cerebral of Sanskrit and Prakrit, which survives to a certain extent in our modern English tongue, though unknown to the Latin and the Teutonic languages. The tribal name is Jat^u, with the short terminal vowel which in Sindhi, as in Sanskrit, follows the consonant; its plural, Jatán, ends with a well-marked nasal.

“At that time I divided this rude race of semi-Bedawin into four great tribes; namely:

“‘The Panjábí Jat, who is neither a Hindu nor a Hindi (Muslim). He first appears in Indian history as a nomad, alternately shepherd, robber, and temporary tiller of the ground. Many became Sikhs, and did good service to Nánah Shah’s faith by their zealous opposition to Muhammadan bigotry. As this was their sole occupation for many years, they gradually grew more and more warlike, and at one time they were as fighting a race as any in India. They have been identified by Colonel Sleeman and others with the ancient Getæ and their descendants the Goths.[92]

“‘The Jat or Dyat of the Hazárah country, Jhang-Siyál, Kach (Kutch) Gandáva, and Sindh generally, where they may number two hundred and fifty thousand out of a total population of one million. They are all Muslims, and are supposed to have emigrated from the north during or shortly after the Kalhorá accession; hence their dialect is commonly called Belochki. In those days the Belochís were very little known to Sindh, whose aristocracy, the Amírs, Jágírdárs, and opulent Zemindárs, was either Sindhi or Jats. About Pesháwur “Jat” is still synonymous with Zemindár or landed proprietor; at times, however, it is used as a term of reproach.

“‘The third is a clan of Belochís, who spell their name with the Arabo-Persian, not the Sindhi j. In the lower Indine Valley they hold the province of Játi, and other parts to the south-east. The head of the tribe is entitled Malik (literally “King”), e.g. Malik Hammál Jat.[93]

“‘The next is a wandering tribe, many of whom are partially settled in Candahár, Herát, Meshhed, and other cities of the Persico-Afghan frontier. They are found in Meckran; and they sometimes travel as far as Maskat, Sindh, and even Central India. They are held to be notorious thieves, occupying a low place in the scale of creation. No good account of this tribe has as yet appeared; and the smallest contributions upon the subject would be right thankfully received.’

“The fifth which must now be added is the Jin-tchi of Central Asia. These people are not, as Mr. Schuyler[94] seems to think, ‘Káfirs from Káfiristan’; they are apparently true Jats—an idea once advanced by Mr. Andrew Wilson of the Abode of Snow.[95]

“These tribes are looked upon as aborigines, which simply means that their predecessors are unknown.[96]

“Such were the notices collected by me in manuscript some years before 1849. At that time the Orientalists of Europe were almost unanimous in identifying the Gypsies with the Nat’h, a scattered Indian tribe of itinerant tinkers and musicians, the ‘poor players’ of the great Peninsula, utterly ignorant of horse-couping, cattle-breeding, and even poultry-snatching. And the conviction still holds its ground; only lately my erudite correspondent, Dr. J. Burnard Davis, reminded me of it.

“Of course the humble linguistic labours of a perpetual explorer can hardly be familiar to the professionally learned world; but I cherish a hope that you will aid me in resurrecting my buried and forgotten work.”

CHAPTER II

THE CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD

The following letter, which bears the author’s signature and the date Paris, May 28, 1875,[97] was the result of my communication to the Academy.[98] As I had objected to my thunder being stolen by Professor Pott and De Goeje, so M. Paul Bataillard charges me with having purloined his artillery:

“The Academy of March 27 last published an interesting letter which only came to my knowledge a few days ago. In this letter Mr. Richard Burton, F.R.G.S., claims the priority in identifying the Gipsies or Tsigans with the Jat of the banks of the Indus, whose name, he adds, is pronounced Dyat. The question has lately been treated at length (25 pages in 8vo, almost entirely consecrated to this subject) by Professor J. de Goeje, of Leyden, who attributes the first idea of this identification to Mr. Pott in 1853, as is stated in the Academy of February 27, in a short article mentioning this Dutch Contribution to the History of the Gipsies.

“Mr. Burton, who has wandered far and wide in the Valley of the Indus, and has much frequented the Jats, published in 1849 a grammar of the Játaki dialect (41 pages), which contains an interesting classification of this race, reproduced in his letter, and, in 1851, a volume upon Sindh—Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus—in which he starts the theory of a probable relationship between the Jats and the Gipsies, as proved in the extracts which he commences by giving of this work.

“Allow me to claim a still earlier priority (dating from 1849), and to begin by establishing exactly the share belonging to each.

“Professor Pott, in his great work, Die Zigeuner, Vol. I. (1844), p. 62, had spoken of the tradition mentioned by Ferdoussy, by the Tarikh-Guzydeh, and ‘by another ...’ that is to say, by the Modjmel-al-Tevarykh, according to which Bahram-Gur, King of Persia, had caused ten or twelve thousand musicians, designated in two at least of these three texts under the name of Luri,[99] to come from India. One or two other names, of which it is not necessary to speak, are added to this one. (See pp. 41, 42 of my memoir, published in 1849, and mentioned by-and-by.)

“Five years later, Professor Pott, coming back to the subject in his article ‘Ueber die Zigeuner,’ published, as a second supplement to his great work, in the Zeitschrift der Deut. Morgenl. Gesellschaft, Vol. III., 1849, said (p. 326):

“Concerning the tradition of which I spoke, Vol. I., p. 62, of the transmigration of Indian musicians into Persia, ordered by Bahram-Gur, and set forth in the Shahnameh, a tradition which is applied perhaps rightly to the Zigeuner, I owe to Fleischer a very interesting notice, and wholly unknown to me hitherto, drawn from Hamza Ispahani, Gottwaldt edition, 1834 (p. 40 of the translation of Gottwaldt), according to which Bahram-Gur, for the pleasure of his subjects, caused twelve thousand musicians, those designated by the name of Zuth, to come from India. They are called Luri in the Shahnameh[100], which is a proof that Hamza did not simply copy this fact. But Fleischer adds what follows relative to the name of Zuth, which I have not yet met with anywhere, and which was a complete enigma to me: ‘The Kamûz says that the Zotth are a race of men of Indian origin, and that the true pronunciation of this word is Djatt, but that the Arabs pronounce it Zotth.’ (See notes 3 and 4 at p. 43 of my memoir of 1849, concerning the rather free translation of this passage of the Kamûz.) In the French and Arabic Dictionary, by Ellious Bocthor, we find: ‘Bohémien, Arabe vagabond, Tchinghiané, qui dit la bonne aventure, vole, etc., is called Zotti at Damascus, plural Zotte.’

“Nothing more. It is clear that, in the identification of the Djat of India with the Tsigans, Professor Pott’s share is very small up to the present. The great Indianist of Halle is rich enough in his own learning to be content with what belongs to him, and the respect I entertain for him and his kind feeling towards me form a sure guarantee that he will not be offended at my setting forth my claim.

“I think I may say that it is I (thanks, it is true, to M. Reinaud) who first treated the question. I had published, in 1844, in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, a rather long memoir upon the Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe (the tirage à part, which is long ago exhausted, has 59 pages octavo). In 1849 I contributed to the same collection a second paper upon the same subject, examining especially Eastern Europe, and establishing for the first time that the Gipsies were in this region at an epoch far anterior to the date (about 1417) of their appearance in the West. I may add, incidentally, that nearly all those who have since spoken of the appearance of the Gipsies in Europe have done little more than draw upon these two memoirs, without always exactly saying what part belonged to me, so that I have often had the annoyance of seeing such or such an author, Francisque Michel more especially, mentioned afterwards in third-hand notices as the original source of what I had written. Now my second memoir (Nouvelles Recherches sur l’Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe, 48 pp. in the tirage à part, Paris, 1849: Franck, rue de Richelieu, 67) ends with an ‘Additional Note’ of ten very compact pages, the principal object of which is precisely to identify the Gipsies and the Indian Djath.

“In this note, or appendix, I begin by collecting and giving, in French, in order that they may be compared, the accounts that Professor Pott had only pointed out, relating to the ten or twelve thousand musicians that Bahram-Gur, King of Persia (420-440 of our era), had sent for from India, that is to say, the tradition related by Ferdoussy in the Shahnameh (about 1000), by the Modjmel-al-Tevarykh (about 1126), by the Tarikh-Guzydeh (about 1329, for this last I have not been able to give the text), and lastly, by Hamza Ispahani, the Arabian author whom Professor Fleischer had just made known to Professor Pott, and who is the oldest of all, since he belongs to the tenth century, while Professor Pott supposed him to have been posterior to Ferdoussy. It is to be remarked that Hamza mentions the descendants of the twelve thousand musicians as still existing in Persia in his time under the name of Zuth, and that Ferdoussy says the same of the ten thousand Luri, whom he represents as vagabonds and thieves. But the new and important point is the name of Zuth given to them by the Arabo-Persian author of the tenth century; and it is here, as I remark in my work (p. 42 of the tirage à part), ‘that the real interest commences.’

“I again find this name (p. 44) under the form of Djatt and Djatty in a fifth account of the same matter by the Persian Mirkhond (fifteenth century); and, after having remarked that the same name is given by the Kamûz under the form Zotth as the Arabian equivalent of Djatt, an Indian race, and that, according to Ellious Bocthor, it serves precisely, under the form Zott, to designate the Gipsies at Damascus, I start from thence to gather from the important Mémoire, etc., sur l’Inde, by M. Reinaud, a few data upon the history of the Zath or Djatt of India, and to establish, pp. 45-48, the probable identity of this race and the Gipsies. I repeat that this is precisely the essential object of my ‘Additional Note.’

“I am not an Orientalist, and besides, as I have not failed to mention, this note of ten large pages was written when my memoir was already in the press. But I had the kind assistance of the learned and lamented M. Reinaud, to whose memory I am glad here to render my tribute of gratitude.

“Also, the eminent scholar of Leipzig, the same who had first opened the way for discovering the connexion between the Gipsies and the Djatt, Professor Fleischer, in a general account embracing the scientific publications of three years (the same Zeitschrift, Vol IV., 1850, p. 452), has not disdained to mention my work in these terms:

“Bataillard, the author, etc., taking up the supplement to Pott, published in our journal, III., pp. 321-335, has, with the aid of Reinaud, shown the great probability of the opinion that the Zigeuner descend from the G’at or G’et, the most ancient inhabitants of the north-west of India; and might not the name Zigeuner, Zingani, Zingari, [Greek: Τζιγγανοι: Tzinganoi], etc., by the intermedium of the form Gitanos, be derived from the name of this people?

“This last supposition of Professor Fleischer’s does not appear to me admissible, for there is no doubt that Gitanos is derived from Egipcianos, as Gipsies is from Egyptians.

“I come at last to Professor Pott’s article ‘Last Contributions towards the Knowledge of the Gipsies and their Language,’ in the same Zeitschrift of 1853 (Vol. VII., pp. 389-399), mentioned in the Academy, quoting Professor de Goeje, as the starting-point for the identification of the Gipsy and the Jat. What do we find there upon this subject? The following lines (p. 393):

“I am indebted to the obliging friendship of Professor Fleischer, of Leipzig (see our Zeitschrift, III., p. 326), for an important passage upon the Zuth of Hamza Ispahani, whose Annals are anterior to the Shahnameh, as M. Bataillard demonstrates in his Nouvelles Recherches, p. 42. For the origin of the Gipsies we ought to consider very attentively these Zotth, who, according to what Rödiger communicates to me, are also confounded with the Zengi (called also Aethiopes, and whose name is even sometimes employed for Zingari: see my Zigeuner, i., p. 45). In fact, the Zuth appear to be the same as the Jats, or, according to the Turkish Kamûz, Tchatt, concerning whom we find in Elliot, Biogr. Index, i. 270-27 (sic) (and especially, Ibid. in Masson, Journey to Kelat, pp. 351-353), an interesting article. See, moreover, Reinaud, Mém. sur l’Inde, 1849, p. 273, note 3 upon the Dschats, which may also be compared with the Proverb. Arab. of Freytag, Vol. II., p. 580 (communicated also by Fleischer, to which I must add the further statement of Bataillard). Above all, it would be very important for us to have some details concerning their language.

“Thus the learned professor of Halle here contents himself with the fresh mention of the passage in Hamza, for which he was indebted to Fleischer, and with pointing out some fresh sources to be consulted for the Zotth, Jats, etc., which had been made known to him by the same savant, and refers besides to my ‘further statements (weitere Auseinandersetzung)’; and, as he afterwards devotes a long page to the analysis of the principal part of my Nouvelles Recherches, which he had mentioned at full length (pp. 389-390), and which he quotes again in several other places, one would think that he had done enough.

“This mention has none the less escaped, according to all appearances, Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, who nevertheless was acquainted with this passage of Pott (since he mentions it, p. 16, so as to induce the belief that the learned professor of Halle was the first to establish a connexion between the Zott or Djatt and the Tsigans), and who quotes in several places my long articles in the Revue Critique on ‘Les derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l’Europe Orientale’ (of which the tirage à part forms an octavo volume of 80 pages, 1872), but who says not a word of my work of 1849. This is an omission such as the most conscientious savants sometimes make; and I do not intend to address a reproach to the learned professor of Leyden, whose work must besides have all the superiority belonging to a deep study made twenty-five years later by a most competent Orientalist. But since the question of priority upon this subject has been raised in your paper, you will, I think, perceive, in perusing what I wrote in 1849, which I send you with this letter, that I have a right not to be completely forgotten, especially when it concerns an interesting point in the history of the Gipsies upon which I have hitherto published only some fragmentary works, but to the study of which I have devoted so many years.

“My letter is already long: allow me, nevertheless, to add yet a few more words. Although I have in my possession the work of Professor de Goeje (the author has had the kindness to send it to me), I cannot say that I am acquainted with it, because I cannot read Dutch, and have not yet found an opportunity of having it translated, which I doubly regret under the present circumstances. I think, however, that I may say that the point treated by the professor of Leyden, and twenty-five years ago by myself, although it be already sufficiently complex, is only one side of the very much more complicated question of the origin of the Gipsies, considered in all its bearings. I hope to be able to show that the historical documents of Eastern Europe, of Western Asia, and of Egypt itself furnish very important data, hitherto very insufficiently considered, upon the question. I think I have also the means of giving an explanation of the word tsigan, and of the other names approaching to it, more certain and more interesting than those proposed by Professor de Goeje and Mr. Burton.

“It is not the less interesting to examine any point of the very complex question of the origin of the Gipsies, and especially one so important as this appears to be of their connexion with the Jats or Djatt. But this point itself has, so to speak, several faces. There is the part belonging to erudition in the strict sense, and I think that Professor de Goeje has treated it very ably; but there is the ethnological, anthropological, and even the linguistic part of the subject, which does not appear to me to be very far advanced up to the present time. It is this part that Mr. Burton has handled; and as he has lived in the midst of the Jats, he was in some respects in the best condition for throwing great light upon it; but, on the one hand, he ought perhaps to have been better acquainted with the Gipsies, and, on the other, it does not appear that the connexion between the Gipsies and the Jats has occupied him much. He has perceived a probable relation between these two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in half a page; but this is not sufficient.[101] No doubt in occupying himself specially with the Jats, in giving in 1849 a grammar of their language (of which I cannot appreciate the value, but which did not prevent Professor Pott, in 1853, from saying that we were wanting in information respecting this idiom),[102] in collecting some very summary data concerning their division into four tribes, and upon their history and manners, he has furnished some materials, but materials quite insufficient,[103] for a comparison, which is still unmade, between this race and the Gipsies. He tells us, for example, that the appearance and other peculiarities of this race authorize as probable the supposition of a relationship between it and the Gipsies. But he does not give us even the smallest information respecting the type (appearance) of the Jats; and the other ‘peculiarities’ which he does not explain, and which we are obliged to seek in scattered traits, furnish such fugitive comparisons that one can conclude nothing from them. In reality nearly every tribe in India (not to speak of certain tribes in other countries) will furnish, when compared with the Gipsies, quite as many, if not more, points of resemblance. Indeed this is, more or less, the defect of nearly all the comparisons which have been made between the Gipsies and such or such populations of India; the authors of these comparisons are not sufficiently acquainted with the Gipsies, and their study of the resemblances is not sufficiently specific.

“The Jats must belong, I suppose so at least, to the Hamite (Chamite), and more particularly to the Kuschite stratum of the Hindoo populations,[104] and for my part I do not doubt that the Gipsies, although their idiom is connected with the Aryan languages of India, belong to this same branch of the human species.—I remark, by the way, in the division made by Mr. Burton of the Jats into four tribes, that one of the districts inhabited by the second is called ‘Kach (Kutch).’[105]—But this branch is widely spread in Asia and in Africa. It would be necessary, in the Kuschite family, to remark the particular traits which distinguish, on the one hand, the Jats, on the other, the Gipsies, in all the very complex affinities allowed by ethnography, and start thence to compare them. This is what remains to be done in order to throw light upon this part of one side of the question of Gipsy origin. It is useless to say that, in following out more particularly this comparison between the Gipsies and the Jats, the other points of comparison that may be furnished by other tribes, related or not to the Jats, such as that of the Tchangar, for example, pointed out by Dr. Trumpp in the Panjab (Mittheil. der Anthrop. Gesellschaft in Wien, T. II., 1872, p. 294, quoted by Miklosich in his third memoir on the Zigeuner, 1873, p. 2), and several others, which it would be too long to mention, must not be neglected. But all this can only be well done in India, and by a person who has specially studied the Gipsies of Europe, of Eastern Europe especially, and, if possible, those of Western Asia and even of Egypt. Unfortunately these conditions are very difficult to find.

“(Signed) Paul Bataillard.”

CHAPTER III

A REVIEW OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD’S REVIEWS

§ 1. Preliminaries

M. Paul Bataillard—ominous name!—who has thus offered me battle in the Academy, is apparently an indefatigable Tsiganologue,[106] to use his own compound; and he seems to have been studying Chinganology since 1841. Of bookmaking on the Gypsy theme there is no apparent end; even the mighty “Magician of the North” proposed, we are told, adding his item to the heap. The reading public, indeed, seems to hold these Hamaxóbioi an ever virgin subject; and since the days of “Gypsy Borrow’s” Translation of St. Luke (1838),[107] The Zincali, The Bible in Spain (1841), and other popular works, it has ever lent an ear to the charmer, charm he never so unwisely. A modern author was not far wrong when he stated: “A great deal of what is called genius has been expended upon the Gypsies, but wonderfully little common sense.”[108]

And the subject has its peculiar charms. These “outlandish persons calling themselves Egyptians or Gypsies”; these cosmopolites equally at home in the snows of Siberia and in the swamps of Sennaar; these Ishmaelites still dwelling in the presence of their brethren, at once on the outskirts and in the very centres of civilized life; this horde of barbarians scattered over the wide world, among us but not of us; these nomads of a progressive age isolated by peculiarities of physique, language, and social habits, of absolute materialism, and of a single rule of conduct, “Self-will,” all distinctly pointing to a common origin; this phenomenon of the glorious epoch which opened a new thoroughfare to the “East Indies,” and which discovered the other half of the globe, is still to many, nay, to most men, an inexplicable ethnic mystery. Englanders mostly take the narrow nursery view of the “Black Man”; at the highest they treat him picturesquely in connexion with creels and cuddies, hammer and tongs, the tin-kettle and the katúna or tilt-tent. Continental writers cast, as usual, a wider and a more comprehensive glance. M. Perier, with French “nattiness,” thus resumes the main points of interest in the singular strangers: “Une race extraordinaire, forte, belle, cosmopolite, errante, et cependant (?) pure, curieuse par conséquent, à tant de titres.” The Rumanians have deemed the theme worthy of poetry; witness the heroic-comic-satyric “Tsiganida,” or Gypsy-Camp, of Leonaki Diancu.[109]

The “wondrous tale” of the old Gypsy gude-wife concerning the “Things of Egypt” is more wonderful, observe, than aught told of Jewry. Certain of the learned credulous, as we read in the Evidences of Christianity and other such works, essentially one-sided, point to the dispersion and the cohesion of the self-styled “Chosen People” as a manner of miracle, a standing witness to certain marvellous events in its past annals. They ignore or forget the higher miracle of the “tinklers.” Whilst the scattering abroad of the Israelites arose naturally from the same causes which in the present day preserve their union, the powerful principle of self-interest and wealth-seeking, the deeply rooted prejudices, social and religious, fostered by a theocratic faith and by a special and exclusive revelation, the lively tradition of past glories and the promises of future grandeur confirmed by the conviction of being a people holy and set apart, the barbarous Romá[110] are held together only by the ties of speech[111] and consanguinity, and by the merest outlines of a faith, such a creed as caste, or rather the outcast, requires. Still the coherence is continuous and complete; still, like the rod of Moses, this ethnological marvel out-miracles the other, and every other, miracle.

Hardly less peculiar is the historical relation of the Jew and the Gypsy. They have many points in common. Both have had their exodus, and are dispersed over the world. Both have peculiarities of countenance which distinguish them from the “Gentiles,” whom they hate, the Goyím and the Busne. Both have their own languages and preserve their racial names.[112] Similarity of conditions, however, which should breed sympathy, as usual amongst men has borne only hatred. But the Jew was wealthy, like his cousin the Morisco. Hence the horrible persecution of the Israelites in Spain (a.d. 1348-98), when a prevailing pest was attributed to their poisoning the water, and which endured till the Hussites drew down upon themselves the earthly “anger of Heaven.” During those dreadful years many of the Hebrews fled to the mountains, the Alpujarras and the Sierras—Morena and de Toledo—and to the wild banks of the Upper Ebro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus. Meanwhile the Gypsies suffered under the conviction that they were Jews who, denying their forefathers, represented themselves to be of Egyptian blood. Presently, when the revenues of the Catholic kings, Henry III. and John II., amounting to 26,550,000 reals (dollars) reduced to our present value, fell under Henry IV. to 3,540,000, the plethoric money-bags of the Israelites led to the establishment of Holy Office and its inquisitorial tribunal (January, 1481). Finally, as if persecution and death were not sufficient, a wholesale expulsion took place in March, 1492. These horrors are still, after the lapse of ages, fresh in the Jewish mind. I have seen at Jerusalem a Khákhám (scribe) so moved by the presence of a Spanish official, that the latter asked me in astonishment how he had managed to offend his host.

But what could the Santa Hermandad alias La Bruja (the witch) find to plunder and pillage in the tent of the Rom? During three centuries of loose wild life, often stained by ferocious crime, and made bestial by the Draconian laws of mediæval Christianity, the Gypsies had their seasons of banishment, torture, and execution; but their poverty and isolation saved them from the horrors of a deliberate and official persecution. Mas pobre que cuerpo de Gitano (Nothing poorer than a Gypsy’s body) is still a proverb in Spain, where men also say, Tan ruin es el conde como los Gitanos. All these barbarities ended in Europe with the close of the eighteenth century, where the new Religion of Humanity had been preached by the encyclopedists whose major prophets were Voltaire and Rousseau, Diderot and D’Alembert.

No Disraeli has hitherto arisen to vindicate the nobility of these “masterful beggars”; and to chronicle their triumphs in court and camp, in arts and arms; to trace them in the genealogies of titled houses, or to strip off the disguises assumed during the intolerant times when the Jew was compelled to swear himself Gentile and the Muslim a Christian. Yet the Gypsies have had their great men, whilst their pure blood has leavened much dull clay and given fresh life to many an effete noble vein. Witness the “King Zindl” or “Zindelo”; the Dukes Michael and Andrew; Counts Ion (Juan) and Panuel (Manuel) of Little Egypt; the Waywodes (Vaivodes) of Dacia; the noble cavalier Pedro, and the chief, Tomas Pulgar, who in a.d. 1496 aided Bishop Sigismund to beat off the Turk invader. Witness, again, the Hungarian Hunyadis, the Russian Tolstoys, and the Scotch Melvilles, not to speak of the Cassilis and the Contis under Louis XIV. Certain Gypsies became soldiers of renown; and John Bunyan, one of the immortals of the earth, is shrewdly suspected of Gypsy descent. Borrow mentions an archbishop and “four dignified ecclesiastics”; while some of the most learned and famed of the priesthood in Spain have been, according to a Gypsy, of the Gypsies, or at least of Gypsy blood.

Such is the Gypsy summed up in a few lines.

These pages have no intention, I repeat, of treating the subject of the Romá generally. My humbler task is confined to showing the affinities between the Gypsies and the great Jat tribe, or rather nation, which extends from the mouths of the Indus to the Steppes of Central Asia. And my first objection must be to a question of precedence with M. Paul Bataillard.

The Tsiganologue claims, as has been seen, “a still earlier priority” in the identification of Gypsy and Jat; and he proposes to “establish exactly the share belonging to each of us.” This is the normal process of the cabinet savant, who is ever appearing, like the deus ex machinâ, to snatch from the explorer’s hand the meed of originality. The former borrows from his books a dozen different theories; and when one happens to be proved true by the labours of the man of action, he straightway sets himself up as the “theoretical discoverer” of the sources of the Nile, or of any other matter which engages popular attention. But in the present case I deny that my rival has any claim whatever. My personal acquaintance with the Jats began in 1845, and my Grammar and Vocabulary were sent to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1848 before my departure from India. On the other hand, M. Paul Bataillard, I understand, knew nothing of the Indine Jats when he wrote his first paper De l’apparition, etc., in 1844. He honestly owns that he is no Orientalist; and that he required the assistance of the late M. Reinaud, who was a scholar, to identify the Zuth of Hamza Ispahani (tenth century), the Luri musicians of the Shahnameh (eleventh century), and the Zoth or Zutt of the Kamûz dictionary (fourteenth century) with the Zatt or Dyatt of India. This was in 1849. His exposé étendu was accepted by Professor Pott in the same year, and appeared in the Nachtrag before mentioned, which completed the grand travail—Die Zigeuner. Such was the extent of my claimant’s discovery. He had even to learn from Professor Fleischer, of Leipzig, that “the Zigeuner descend from the G’at or G’et, the most ancient inhabitants of North-Western India,”[113] a second-hand opinion, derived from “Gypsy Borrow,” Colonel Sleeman, and other Englishmen. I need hardly say that Professor Pott, the distinguished member of that heroic band which founded comparative philology, knew nothing practically or personally about either the Gypsies or the Jats. And it is evident that Professor de Goeje is in outer darkness when he speaks of “the view propounded by Pott as early as 1853.”

At that time, and indeed until I wrote to the Academy in 1875, M. Paul Bataillard evidently ignored “M. Burton”; and no blame be to him for not knowing a paper published by a colonial society a quarter of a century ago. But he also ignored far more important facts. He applies the term petite population Djatte to the great scattered nation called Jat. He was of course not aware that this people preserve in the Indine Delta, the “Salt Country” of the Sindhis, the purity of its tongue, which, farther north, is corrupted by an admixture of Sindhi, Belochki, and Panjabi. Nor could he be alive to the fact that many points of similarity, anthropological and linguistic, connect the Gypsy and the Jat. There are men who are personally averse to new things, and the easy alternative is to depreciate their value. “He,” I am assured by my rival claimant, “has perceived a probable relation between these two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in half a page; but this is not sufficient.”

Such an assertion, however, is more than sufficient for estimating and appreciating the Bataillard system of treating a literary question. For “half a page” read a dozen pages,[114] which might easily have been extended to many a dozen. But I had hoped that the statement of a traveller who had met the Gypsies at Oxford (Bagley Wood), in England, and on the Continent, and the knowledge of their racial characteristics, general amongst educated Englishmen, justified a conciseness imperiously demanded whilst treating in one volume the geography, history, and ethnology of a country nearly equalling England in length. Again, when M. Bataillard assures his readers that I have “not given even the smallest information respecting the type (appearance) of the Jats,” he once more makes it evident that he should have read me before pretending to write about me. I will quote my description in full,[115] so that the public may judge between him and me:

“We are now in the provinces inhabited by the Jats. Your [i.e. Mr. John Bull’s] eye is scarcely grown critical enough in this short time to see the tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee-like difference between their personal appearance and that of their kinsmen the Scindians; nor can I expect you as yet to distinguish a Jat wandh (village) from a Scinde goth (village). You are certain to take some interest in a race which appears to be the progenitor of the old witch in a red cloak, whose hand, in return for the cunning nonsense to which her tongue gave birth, you once crossed with silver; and of the wiry young light-weight, whose game and sharp hitting you have, in happier days, more than once condescended to admire.

“Our authors[116] probably err when they suppose the Jat to be the original Hindu of Scinde converted to Islam. Native historians and their own traditions concur in assigning to them a strange origin; their language, to this day, a corrupt dialect of that spoken throughout the Indine provinces of the Panjab, gives support and real value to the otherwise doubtful testimony.[117] It is probable that, compelled to emigrate from their own lands by one of the two main causes that bring about such movements in the East, war or famine, the Jats of Scinde travelled southward about the beginning of the eighteenth century of our era.

“Under the quasi-ecclesiastical Kalhorá dynasty, when Scindians composed the aristocracy as well as the commonalty of the country, the Jats, in consequence of their superior strength, their courage, and their clannish coalescence, speedily rose to high distinction. The chiefs of tribes became nobles, officials, and ministers at court; they provided for their families by obtaining grants of ground, feoffs incidental to certain military services, and for their followers by settling them as tenants on their broad lands. But the prosperity of the race did not last long. They fell from their high estate when the Belochis, better men than they, entered the country, and began to appropriate it for themselves; by degrees, slow yet sure, they lost all claims to rank, wealth, and office. They are now found scattered throughout Scinde, generally preferring the south-eastern provinces, where they earn a scanty subsistence by agriculture; or they roam over the barren plains feeding their flocks upon the several oases; or they occupy themselves in breeding, tending, training, and physicking the camel. With the latter craft their name has become identified, a Jat and a sarwan (camel-man) sounding synonymous in Scindian ears.

“The Jats in appearance are a swarthy and uncomely race, dirty in the extreme, long, gaunt, bony, and rarely, if ever, in good condition. Their beards are thin, and there is a curious (i.e. Gypsy-like) expression in their eyes.[118] They dress like Scindians, preferring blue to white clothes; but they are taller, larger, and more un-Indian in appearance. Some few, but very few, of their women are, in early youth, remarkable for soft and regular features; this charm, however, soon yields to the complicated ugliness brought on by exposure to the sun, by scanty living, and by the labour of baggage-cattle. In Scinde the Jats of both sexes are possessed of the virtues especially belonging to the oppressed and inoffensive Eastern cultivation; they are necessarily frugal and laborious, peaceful, and remarkable for morality in the limited sense of aversion to intrigue with members of a strange Kaum.[119] I say in Scinde; this is by no means the reputation of the race in the other parts of Central Asia, where they have extended (or whence possibly they came).[120] The term ‘Jat’ is popularly applied to a low and servile creature, or to an impudent villain; and despite of the Tohfat el Kiram,[121] a Beloch would consider himself mortally affronted were you to confound his origin with the caste which his ancestors deposed, and which he despises for having allowed itself to be degraded. The Brahins, Afghans, and Persians all have a bad word to say of them.”

Thus far M. Paul Bataillard has shown himself only the carpet-slippered littérateur de cabinet, who laboriously borrows from others, and who evidently expects his second-hand labours to faire époque.

But my rival claimant, let me hasten to own, has solid merits. His theory that Gypsy emigrations are of ancient date, and probably of high antiquity, deserves consideration. His later notices of the Jats correct the vulgar error which made Taymur the Tatar cause the first exodus of our “sorners.” He notes the especial hatred, possibly racial, nourished by these Gentile vagrants against the other scattered nation, the Jews. Other minor but still interesting matters of which he treats are the history of the Gypsies especially with respect to their slavery and serfdom—Crown captives, not chattels personal; their periodical wanderings and visitings; their vestiges of faith; their vernacular and humble literature; their private and tribal names suggesting those of the modern Israelitic Synagogue; and their supplying the dancing-girls of the nearer East, while in the lupanars of Europe a Gypsy girl is unknown.

I now propose to run as rapidly as the subject permits through M. Paul Bataillard’s four papers seriatim. The critique will not only notice novelties, but will also attempt to correct what to a practical man appears to want correction in connexion with the Gypsies.