“I think I may say that it is I (thanks, it is true, to M. Reinaud) who first treated the question. I had published, in 1844, in the _Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes_, a rather long memoir upon the _Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe_ (the _tirage à part_, which is long ago exhausted, has 59 pages octavo). In 1849 I contributed to the same collection a second paper upon the same subject, examining especially Eastern Europe, and establishing for the first time that the Gipsies were in this region at an epoch far anterior to the date (about 1417) of their appearance in the West. I may add, incidentally, that nearly all those who have since spoken of the appearance of the Gipsies in Europe have done little more than draw upon these two memoirs, without always exactly saying what part belonged to me, so that I have often had the annoyance of seeing such or such an author, Francisque Michel more especially, mentioned afterwards in third-hand notices as the original source of what I had written. Now my second memoir (_Nouvelles Recherches sur l’Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe_, 48 pp. in the _tirage à part_, Paris, 1849: Franck, rue de Richelieu, 67) ends with an ‘Additional Note’ of ten very compact pages, the principal object of which is precisely to identify the Gipsies and the Indian Djath. “In this note, or appendix, I begin by collecting and giving, in French, in order that they may be compared, the accounts that Professor Pott had only pointed out, relating to the ten or twelve thousand musicians that Bahram-Gur, King of Persia (420-440 of our era), had sent for from India, that is to say, the tradition related by Ferdoussy in the _Shahnameh_ (about 1000), by the _Modjmel-al-Tevarykh_ (about 1126), by the _Tarikh-Guzydeh_ (about 1329, for this last I have not been able to give the text), and lastly, by Hamza Ispahani, the Arabian author whom Professor Fleischer had just made known to Professor Pott, and who is the oldest of all, since he belongs to the tenth century, while Professor Pott supposed him to have been posterior to Ferdoussy. It is to be remarked that Hamza mentions the descendants of the twelve thousand musicians as still existing in Persia in his time under the name of _Zuth_, and that Ferdoussy says the same of the ten thousand _Luri_, whom he represents as vagabonds and thieves. But the new and important point is the name of _Zuth_ given to them by the Arabo-Persian author of the tenth century; and it is here, as I remark in my work (p. 42 of the _tirage à part_), ‘that the real interest commences.’