[117] Both of these statements have been modified by subsequent experience. The Jats are _not_ immigrants, nor is their language corrupt Panjabi. It is connected with the Sindhi; but it wants those intricacies and difficulties, and that exuberance of grammatical forms, which, distinguishing the latter from its Prakrit sisters, renders it so valuable for the philological comparison of the neo-Aryan tongues. The vernacular of the Sindh Valley has preserved many forms for which we vainly look in its cognates, and it is notably freer from foreign admixture than any other of the North Indian dialects, the Panjabi, Hindi, and Bengali of our day. It has, in fact, remained tolerably steady to that first stage of decomposition which attacked the Prakrit of the ancients. Hence Dr. Trumpp (_loc. cit._) holds it to be an immediate derivation from the _Apabhransha_, which the old grammarians placed lowest in the scale of Prakrit speech. “While all the modern vernaculars of India,” he says, “are already so degraded that the venerable mother tongue (Sanskrit) is hardly recognizable in her degenerate daughters, the Sindhi has, on the contrary, preserved most important fragments of it, and erected for itself a grammatical structure which far surpasses in beauty of execution and internal harmony the loose and levelling construction of its sisters.” [118] Every observer has noticed the Gypsy eye, which films over, as it were, as soon as the owner becomes weary or _ennuyé_; it has also a remarkable “far-off” glance, as if looking over and beyond you. Borrow (_The Zincali_) describes it as a “strange stare like nothing else in this world.” And again he says that “a thin glaze steals over it in repose, and seems to emit phosphoric light.” It is certainly a marvellous contrast with the small, fat-lidded eye of the Jew, the oblique and porcine feature of the Chinese, and the oblong optic of the old Egypt which in profile looks like full face. [119] In the language of the Jat a Kaum is a clan. [120] The italicised words are in the second edition. [121] The author of this well-known Persian history of Sindh asserts that the Jats and the Belochis are both sprung from the same ancestors. [122] I cannot but suspect some connexion between the Gypsy tribal name and that of the Counts Szapary, one governor of Fiume, and the other commanding a _corps d’armée_ in Bosnia. [123] _Die Einwanderung der Zigeuner in Europa._ Ein Vortrag von Carl Hopf. (Gotha, 1870.) [124] _Des Bohémiens et de leur Musique en Hongrie._ (Paris, 1859.) [125] Literally, a descendant from Lot; popularly, a loose fellow, a cad. [126] [_The Arabic word is_ [Arabic: العود] _which is currently transliterated as El-`Oúd_.--_Transcriber_.] [127] _Ueber die Mundarten und Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa’s._ Von Dr. Franz Miklosich Denkschriften der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften. (Wien, 1872-77.) [128] _Étude, etc._, p. 15; see also _Derniers Travaux_, p. 37.