It is very possible that when they first came from the East to Europe the Gipsies had a very copious supply of words, for there were men among them of superior intelligence.  But in Turkey, as in Germany, they have not been brought into such close contact with the Gorgios as in England:  they have not preserved their familiarity with so many ideas, and consequently their vocabulary has diminished.  Most of the Continental Gipsies are still wild, black wanderers, unfamiliar with many things for which the English Gipsy has at least a name, and to which he has continued to apply old Indian words.  Every one familiar with the subject knows that the English Gipsies in America are far more intelligent than their German Rommany cousins.  A few years ago a large party of the latter appeared at an English racecourse, where they excited much attention, but greatly disgusted the English Roms, not as rivals, but simply from their habits.  “They couldn’t do a thing but beg,” said my informant.  “They jinned (knew) nothing else:  they were the dirtiest Gipsies I ever saw; and when the juvas suckled the children, they sikkered their burks (showed their breasts) as I never saw women do before foki.”  Such people would not, as a rule, know so many words as those who looked down on them.

The conclusion which I have drawn from studying Anglo-Rommany, and different works on India, is that the Gipsies are the descendants of a vast number of Hindus, of the primitive tribes of Hindustan, who were expelled or emigrated from that country early in the fourteenth century.  I believe they were chiefly of the primitive tribes, because evidence which I have given indicates that they were identical with the two castes of the Doms and Nats—­the latter being, in fact, at the present day, the real Gipsies of India.  Other low castes and outcasts were probably included in the emigration, but I believe that future research will prove that they were all of the old stock.  The first Pariahs of India may have consisted entirely of those who refused to embrace the religion of their conquerors.

It has been coolly asserted by a recent writer that Gipsies are not proved to be of Hindu origin because “a few” Hindu words are to be found in their language.  What the proportion of such words really is may be ascertained from the dictionary which will follow this work.  But throwing aside all the evidence afforded by language, traditions, manners, and customs, one irrefutable proof still remains in the physical resemblance between Gipsies all the world over and the natives of India.  Even in Egypt, the country claimed by the Gipsies themselves as their remote great-grandfather-land, the native Gipsy is not Egyptian in his appearance but Hindu.  The peculiar brilliancy of the eye and its expression in the Indian is common to the Gipsy, but not to the Egyptian or Arab; and every donkey-boy in Cairo knows the difference between the Rhagarin and the native as to personal appearance.  I have seen both Hindus in Cairo and Gipsies, and the resemblance to each other is as marked as their difference from Egyptians.