GYPSY.
They call themselves Rom, Romani, Romnna-chal, or Ritmna-chill, two Hindi words, meaning field wal kers. Their primi tive name is Raid tO be Tzengari.
Gypsies did not leave India before A.D. 1000. They entered Europe through Greece, were in Crete in 1322, in Corfu in 1346, and in Wallachia in 1370. Who are their Indian remnants, if any, irs very doubtful ; but Nat'h, Bazigar, Dont, Korawa, and Yerkal have been named, and in Persia and the Turkoman country, the Kauli and Kara-chi. Their nuinber amounts to about five millions, half a million being in Europe. But races with similar habits are found throughout Northern Africa and great part of Central, Southern, and Eastern Asia, ostensibly working as tinkers, smiths, farriers, dealers in horses, and naturally familiar with them ; without religion, unscrupulous thieves ; women, fortune-tellers, especially by chiromancy ; eating animals which have died a natural death ; flay animals, carry corpses, make mats, baskets, and small articles of wood ; show great skill a.s dancers, musicians, singers, acrobats ; and there is hardly a travelling company of such performers, or a theatre in Europe or America, in which there is not at least one person with some Romany blood. Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they retain it longer titan do Europeans or ordin ary orientals.
The gypsies of Bokhara and on the banks of the Zar-afshan river chiefly dwell in tents made of biaz, la coarse cotton stuff. The gyNies in the N. parts of Persia lead a wandering life, but always aloof from the other erratic tribes ; and they go by the 'name of Karachi, from the Turkish work ICara, meaning black. They exercise the trade of tinkers, and are consulted at times as horse doctors ; but they are in general looked down upon by the inhabitants settled in towns and villages, and even by the other wandering tribes. In Kermanshah and Kurdistan, where their number is very con siderable, they also lead a vagabond life, and are known by the denominations of Susmani and Kauli. In Ardelan, which is the Persian ICurdi stan, there is a large village near Senneh inhabited solely by the Susmani. Their women are like the Indian Bayadere, and dance at the Persian majalis or assemblies, to the music which their husbands perform on some stringed instruments. There are several Iliyat tribes in Persia, the sound of whose names bear some resemblance with Zigane. These are the Z engheneh, once a very considerable, and until now reckoned a very noble, Kurdish tribe of Kermanshah. A branch of them was also trans planted by Nadir Shah into Luristan, where another tribe of the samo name of Zengheneh, though of Lurish origin, is established.
A singular class of wanderers, known by the name of Mayadds, visited Lahore in 1868. They spoke a peculiar language among themselves, though when within earshot of Europeans and Indians they spoke Persian. The Mayadds were always armed on reaching the Indian frontier, a fact for which they accounted by saying that they were Malts, whom the Sunni sect sometimes man age t,o sell as slaves. When,' says Dr. Lietner, visited their encampment, their frantic gesticula tions, and the hurling of children by one woman to another in order to emphasize her rage, reminded me of a scene recorded in my account of the gypsies of Turkey, . . . when a case was decided in favour of that side in a tribal contention, which cottld dance '70 most obscenely and use the strongest expressions whilst advocating their own cause.' Others of the same tribe appear to have visited Lahore in 1870.
In a work on Bokhara, Mr. Khanikoff alludes to three tribes established there, which, he thinks, belong to the gypsy race. They are called Jughi, Mezeng, and Luli; and though outwardly profess ing Mahomedanism, seem to have no religion at all. General Ferrier mentions that the gypsies in Persia lead a: wandering life ; each band is independent ; they preserve their own ideas of caste as a, peculiar people, and with them the dirtiest habits ; live upon next to nothing, and detest a regular life and a fixed place of abode. There are more than 15,000 families of gypsies dispersed over various provinces of Persia, paying a heavy tax .to the Government. They are called Kauli, also Fal-sen, or fortune-tellers ; also Kalbir-band, or sieve makers, because this is their principal occupation; these, their wives, who do not. hide their faces, sell from door to door. General Ferrier at Rubat Abdullah Khan came on a eamp of Kal-bir band gypsies, and the moment they perceived the travellers they called off their dogs, who were replaced by the women and children, vociferous for alms. It was impossible to proceed a step, for they hung on the legs, clothes, and bridles of the travellers, and completely hampered them ; they were absolutely forced to comply with their clamorous demands. The women had sunburnt complexions ; they were tall, with finely developed forms, which they cared as little to conceal as they did their faces. The men were seated at a little distance, inaking sieves, and apparently quite unconcerned about the proceedings of their wives. These gypsies had the same wandering instincts like all others he met with in Asia.