Dissertation on the Gipseys: Representing their manner of life, family economy, occupations & trades, marriages & education, sickness, death, & burial, religion, language, sciences & arts, &c. &c. &c.; with an historical enquiry concerning their origin & first appearance in EuropeGrellmann, Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb
History
Dissertation on the Gipseys: Representing their manner of life, family economy, occupations & trades, marriages & education, sickness, death, & burial, religion, language, sciences & arts, &c. &c. &c.; with an historical enquiry concerning their origin & first appearance in Europe
Grellmann, Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb
Romanies
If people, in reflecting on the emigration of the Gipseys, are not
determined to imagine that they were actuated by a blind impulse, to
break up at once, and quit their native country; no cause can be assigned
for their retreat from thence so plausible as the war of Timur Beg in
India. The date of their arrival marks it very plainly. It was in the
years 1408 and 1409 that this conqueror ravaged India; and having
persuaded himself, as well as his followers, that he had undertaken the
expedition against India for the purpose of disseminating the Mahometan
religion, his war was oppressive enough to occasion such an emigration.
Not only every one who made any resistance was destroyed, and such as
fell into the enemy’s hands, though quite defenceless, were made slaves,
but in a short time these very slaves, to the number of a hundred
thousand, were put to death. As in consequence an universal panic took
place, nobody being secure that it might not be his own fate in a short
time, what could be more natural than that a great number of terrified
inhabitants should endeavour to save themselves by flight?
An objection naturally occurs, that when this supposed flight took place,
had it been true, not Gipseys only, or the lowest class of people, but
with them all sorts of Indians, of superior rank, would have come among
us. But this argument will fall of itself, when we reflect on the
prepossession which the three higher castes of Indians entertain for
their country. They ascribe an extraordinary degree of holiness to it,
and believe it to be the only country thought, by the Creator of the
universe, worthy for such sanctified people as the Bramins,
Tschechteries, and Beis, to dwell in. They would rather suffer torture
and death, than quit this land, chosen by the Almighty himself for their
residence, to go and dwell any-where else. Moreover a Suder is, in their
estimation, the most execrable being in the world; and the least
intercourse with him would be defiling and degrading their high
characters, which, to them, would be more dreadful than death. Wherefore
it was a moral impossibility for those of a higher caste to have any
thing in common with a Suder, or that they should have made an united
retreat. Finally, by putting themselves into the power of the Suders,
with whom they live constantly in a state of discord and inveteracy, they
would have hazarded a greater danger, than by patiently risking their
fate from the hands of their common enemy. If any of the higher ranks of
Indians did withdraw themselves, on account of the troubles, it is
probable they retired southwards, to people of their own sort, the
Mahrattas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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