Some of the Bazeegurs are owners of land, which they entertain a great desire to obtain, but they are' never cultivators. They are collected, as already observed, into various associations in different parts of India. The dancing girls, however, have no re gular and settled habitations ; they dwell merely in temporary huts, erected near the place of their ex hibitions. The duration of their lives is supposed to be much abridged by the course of life which they lead, particularly from the violent exercises practised from early youth, and habitual indulgence in intoxi• eating draughts. Both males and females undergo such a regular progress of debauchery, that few live beyond forty, and many do not attain their thirtieth year. But, from the pursuits of the females being productive to their parents, their marriages are de terred to a later period than is usual in India. There prostitution is free from that odium and contempt which it incurs in Europe, and those females who are considered so unfortunate and depraved by us, are under the special protection of the laws. The female Bazeegurs who are taught singing and dancing only, are under no greater personal restraint than the common dancing girls of Hindostan ; but the chastity of those whose particular department is tumbling, is strictly enjoined until their place be supplied by others more youthful. When this substitution comes, they join the companies of dancers alone ; and the men, though quite aware of their incontinence, do not scruple to select wives from among them. But, after marriage, a total change of conduct is expected, and it is said that such expectations are commonly real ized. Nevertheless, among the Panchperee, the fide lity of those employed in different vocations in the towns becomes suspected, if they have not returned to their homes when the cry of the jackal is heard, and their husbands are by no means disposed to over look the offence. It cioes not appear, however, that they ha% e either the power or the inclination of the Hindoos, who sometimes, in such cases, decoy their own daughters to a lonely place for the purpose of perpetrating a barbarous murder on them, as the punishment of their indiscretion. The Bazeegur pa rents and husbands are content with slighter expia tions ; but if the paramour be not of their own par ticular cast, the incontinence of the female is judged a much more grievous fault.
The females now alluded to are those who do not attend the juggling exhibitions of the men, or their feats of activity ; they practise physic, cup ping, and perform a kind of tattowing on the skin of the Hindoos of their own sex, called Gedna. As the men, besides their usual occupations, collect me dicinal herbs, and a certain bud, the latter is dried, and the former prepared by their wives as curatives, especially of the complaints of their own sex : thus they find employment in the towns, in such vo cations, or by the sale of trinkets, though both afford but a precarious subsistence. Some tribes al
so exhibit wild beasts to the vulgar, or offer mats fabricated by themselves for sale. Before the esta blishment of the British government in Bengal, the Bazeegurs were subject to the arbitrary exactions of a tax-gatherer whom they greatly dreaded, and. tho apprehension of the renewal of that officer's powers has proved a considerable impediment to investigat ing their manners and customs.
A general coincidence in the mode of life, the vo cations, manners, and language of all the different sects of these .people, determine them as belonging to the same race. The distinctions seen among them are too trivial to admit of their being considered of separate and independent origin. They are different from all the other tribes dispersed throughout Hin dustan ; and have two dialects also peculiar to them selves, the one most probably a jargon, which is spoken only among the public performers; the other, in cameo use, among the whole. The Bazeegurs are supposed to present many features analogThis to the Gipsies scattered over Europe and Asia, where they subsist as a distinct race from all the other inha bitants of the countries frequented by them. Both the Bazeegurs and Gipsies have a chief or king; each has a peculiar language, bearing some reciprocal analogy, and different from that of the people among whom they reside, and this analogy is so decided, that it is difficult to deny, that with both it has had a common origin. In India, and in Europe, they are equally an itinerant race ; their pursuits, in so far as modified by the manners of countries distant from each other, are alike; for the discrepancies they exhibit, may reasonably be ascribed to an insen sible acquisition of the habits of those near whom the various -tribes of mankind dwell. They are equally indifferent as,to the quality of the food sere ing for their subsistence ; and equally ignorant of systematic religious principles. All preserve the strictest adherence to their own sect, and sedulously abstain from intermixtures or intermarriages 'with those of every nation ; and where infringements of these rules are seen, they are to be ascribed more to necessity than inclination. Another resemblance, which has probably been lost in the lapse of time, is supposed to consist in the three-stringed viol, intro duced into Europe by the jugglers of the thirteenth century, which is exactly similar to the instrument now used in Hihdostan. Separate and disjoined, these analogies may not carry conviction of the identity of the European Gipsies with the Indian Ba seegurs, but, on uniting and combining the whole, it does not seem unlikely, that if Asia is,their original country, or if they have found their way from Egypt to India, they may also have emigrated farther at a period of remote antiquity, and reached the boun daries of Europe. •act")