It has of late years been one of the favourite theories of the learned, that Timour’s invasion of Hindostan, and the cruelties committed by his savage hordes in that part of the world, caused a vast number of Hindoos to abandon their native land, and that the Gypsies of the present day are the descendants of those exiles who wended their weary way to the West. Now, provided the above passage in the work of Arabschah be entitled to credence, the opinion that Timour was the cause of the expatriation and subsequent wandering life of these people, must be abandoned as untenable. At the time he is stated by the Arabian writer to have annihilated the Gypsy hordes of Samarcand, he had but just commenced his career of conquest and devastation, and had not even directed his thoughts to the invasion of India; yet at this early period of the history of his life, we find families of Zingarri established at Samarcand, living much in the same manner as others of the race have subsequently done in various towns of Europe and the East; but supposing the event here narrated to be a fable, or at best a floating legend, it appears singular that, if they left their native land to escape from Timour, they should never have mentioned in the Western world the name of that scourge of the human race, nor detailed the history of their flight and sufferings, which assuredly would have procured them sympathy; the ravages of Timour being already but too well known in Europe. That they came from India is much easier to prove than that they fled before the fierce Mongol. Such people as the Gypsies, whom the Bishop of Forli in the year 1422, only sixteen years subsequent to the invasion of India, describes as a ‘raging rabble, of brutal and animal propensities,’ {37} are not such as generally abandon their country on foreign invasion. THE ZINCALI PART I CHAPTER I GITÁNOS, or Egyptians, is the name by which the Gypsies have been most generally known in Spain, in the ancient as well as in the modern period, but various other names have been and still are applied to them; for example, New Castilians, Germans, and Flemings; the first of which titles probably originated after the name of Gitáno had begun to be considered a term of reproach and infamy. They may have thus designated themselves from an unwillingness to utter, when speaking of themselves, the detested expression ‘Gitáno,’ a word which seldom escapes their mouths; or it may have been applied to them first by the Spaniards, in their mutual dealings and communication, as a term less calculated to wound their feelings and to beget a spirit of animosity than the other; but, however it might have originated, New Castilian, in course of time, became a term of little less infamy than Gitáno; for, by the law of Philip the Fourth, both terms are forbidden to be applied to them under severe penalties.