“A people proscribed by opinion, and doomed by the laws to opprobrium and ignominy; a race which, driven from all liberal professions, has been for ages, and still is, robbed of its right to hold landed property; which, subjected to special and severe regulations, has learned at once to obey and yet to preserve a manner of independence; which, despite the contempt that it inspires and the hate that it awakes and the prejudices wherewith it is received and judged, still resists this contempt, this hatred, and finally all those causes which ought to disunite, loosen, and annihilate the family, the race, the nation;--such a people, I say, deserves the observer’s attention, if only from the fact of its existence.” JAUBERT DE PASSA. TO THE READER Of general works upon the subject of the Gypsies we have perhaps enough, and more than enough; this objection, however, cannot be urged against specialities, which still are highly desirable in every department of “Chinganology.” I use the latter term in preference to the French _Tsiganologie_, of which more presently, and the “Romanology,” a term of dubious import, lately introduced into English. I wish to place _in extenso_ before the public the following conclusions which the study of some years has, it is hoped, justified me in drawing with regard to the relation of the Gypsies and the Jats: 1. The mediæval Gypsies of Europe were the last wave of Aryan emigration that flowed westward during the early fifteenth century; and this wave was possibly preceded by more than one similar exodus. 2. The mediæval Gypsies show family resemblances, physical and moral, ethnological and linguistic, with the modern Jats, a highly important race, which extends from the mouth of the Indus to the head of the great Valley, thence ramifying over Turkistan and the far North. 3. There are solid reasons for believing the Jats and the Jin-tchi of Tatary to be the modern representatives of the classical Getæ and the Goths of later days. 4. The language of both tribes (Jat and Gypsy) is of Indo-Persian type, the Indian ingredient not being so much decomposed as in the modern varieties of Prakrit. An absolute isolation of speech, especial reasons for secrecy, and the fact of being oral and never written have preserved its purity among the Gypsies; while the Jats, in close contact with alien tongues, have made those secular linguistic changes which are familiar even to English and French. 5. The most ancient name of the race is _Chingáneh_, a term still used in Persia and Turkey, and necessarily corrupted by the Arabs, who have no _ch_, to _Jingáneh_.