The word shaster was given to me very distinctly by a Gipsy, who further volunteered the information, that it not only meant the Scriptures, but also any written book whatever, and somewhat marred the dignity of the sublime association of the Bible and Shaster, by adding that “any feller’s bettin’-book on the race-ground was a shasterni lil, ’cos it’s written.”

I have never heard of the evil eye among the lower orders of English, but among Gipsies a belief in it is as common as among Hindus, and both indicate it by the same word, seer or sihr.  In India sihr, it is true, is applied to enchantment or magic in general, but in this case the whole may very well stand for a part.  I may add that my own communications on the subject of the jettatura, and the proper means of averting it by means of crab’s claws, horns, and the usual sign of the fore and little finger, were received by a Gipsy auditor with great faith and interest.

To show, teach, or learn, is expressed in Gipsy by the word sikker, sig, or seek.  The reader may not be aware that the Sikhs of India derive their name from the same root, as appears from the following extract from Dr Paspati’s etudes:  “Sikava, v. prim. 1 cl. 1 conj. part, siklo’, montrer, apprendre.  Sanskrit, s’iks’, to learn, to acquire science; siksaka, adj., a learner, a teacher.  Hindustani, seek’hna, v.a., to learn, to acquire; seek’h, s.f., admonition.”  I next inquired why they were called Seeks, and they told me it was a word borrowed from one of the commandments of their founder, which signifies ‘learn thou,’ and that it was adopted to distinguish the sect soon after he disappeared.  The word, as is well known, has the same import in the Hindoovee” ("Asiatic Researches,” vol. i. p. 293, and vol. ii. p. 200).  This was a noble word to give a name to a body of followers supposed to be devoted to knowledge and truth.

The English Gipsy calls a mermaid a pintni; in Hindu it is bint ool buhr, a maid of the sea.  Bero in Gipsy is the sea or a ship, but the Rommany had reduced the term to the original bint, by which a girl is known all over the East.

   “Ya bint’ Eeskendereyeh.”

Stan is a word confounded by Gipsies with both stand, a place at the races or a fair, and tan, a stopping-place, from which it was probably derived.  But it agrees in sound and meaning with the Eastern stan, “a place, station,” and by application “country,” so familiar to the reader in Hindustan, Iranistan, Beloochistan, and many other names.  It is curious to find in the Gipsy tan not only the root-word of a tent, but also the “Alabama,” or “here we rest,” applied by the world’s early travellers to so many places in the Morning Land.