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
As every part to the northward and eastward was beset by the enemy, and
no passage left in those directions for escaping, it seems most probable
that the countries below Multan, to the mouth of the Indus, were the
first asylum and rendezvous of the fugitive Suders. Here they were safe;
and so remained, till Timur returned from his victories on the Ganges.
Then it was that they first entirely quitted the country; and, probably,
with them a considerable number of the proper inhabitants about the
Indus, which will explain the meaning of their original name, Ciganen,
or, according to the German mode of speaking, Zigeuner. For if it was in
the country of the Zinganen that these terrified fugitives collected; and
they afterwards drew a considerable number of the Zinganen themselves
along with them, nothing could be more easy or natural than that the
people who had assembled from the general wreck should take the name of
the greater number.
By what route they came to us, cannot be ascertained: if they went
straight through the southern Persian deserts of Sigistan, Makran, and
Kirman, along the Persian Gulph to the mouth of the Euphrates, thence
they might get, by Bassora, into the great deserts of Arabia, afterwards
into Arabia Petræa, and so arrive in Egypt, by the isthmus of Suez. They
must certainly have been in Egypt before they reached us; otherwise we
cannot account for the report that they were Egyptians. In what manner
they were afterwards transported to Europe is also an obscure research:
perhaps it was effected by means of the Turks, who, being at that time
fully employed with the Grecian empire, might permit the Gipseys to
travel about with the rabble of Serdenjesti and Nephers, who were
appointed to go on ravaging parties. However, all that can be said upon
that subject is mere surmise. The chief aim in this Dissertation was, to
prove that the Gipseys came from Hindostan, and that they were Suders,
which it is hoped has been accomplished. When every thing, even the most
fortuitous concomitant circumstances, but particularly that most decisive
one—the similarity of their language to that of Hindostan, uniformly
point out that extraction, we cannot believe them to belong to a
different country, and to be descended from another people.
SUPPLEMENT.
To invalidate, if possible, the charge of cannibalism—apparently so well
founded—brought against the Gipsey tribe, it is thought proper in this
place to mention circumstances, relative to the proceedings in Hungary,
which at least render the justice of the sentence pronounced against
these devoted people doubtful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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