They ate without scruple animals which had died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig, which, when it has thus been “butchered by God,” is still regarded even by prosperous gypsies in England as a delicacy.
They flayed animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar detested callings that in several European countries they long monopolized them.
They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles of wood.
They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers, acrobats; and it is a rule almost without exception that there is hardly a traveling company of such performers or a theatre, in Europe or America, in which there is not at least one person with some Romany blood.
Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they retain it longer than do Europeans or ordinary Orientals.
They speak an Aryan tongue, which agrees in the
main with that of the Jāts, but which contains words gathered from other Indian sources. This is a consideration of the utmost importance, as by it alone can we determine what was the agglomeration of tribes in India which formed the Western gypsy.
Admitting these as the peculiar pursuits of the race, the next step should be to consider what are the principal nomadic tribes of gypsies in India and Persia, and how far their occupations agree with those of the Romany of Europe. That the Jāts probably supplied the main stock has been admitted. This was a bold race of Northwestern India, which at one time had such power as to obtain important victories over the caliphs. They were broken and dispersed in the eleventh century by Mahmoud, many thousands of them wandering to the West. They were without religion, “of the horse, horsey,” and notorious thieves. In this they agree with the European gypsy. But they are not habitual eaters of mullo bālor, or “dead pork;” they do not devour everything like dogs. We cannot ascertain that the Jāt is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and basket maker, a rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a peddler. We do not know whether they are peculiar in India among the Indians for keeping their hair unchanged to old age, as do pure-blood English gypsies. All of these things are, however, markedly characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers, or gypsies, in India. From this we conclude, hypothetically, that the Jāt warriors were supplemented by other tribes,—chief among these may have been the Dom,—and that the Jāt element has at present disappeared, and been supplanted by the lower type.
The Doms are a race of gypsies found from Central
India to the far northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appears as the Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan. In “The People of India,” edited by J. Forbes Watson and J. W. Kaye (India Museum, 1868), we are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a marked difference from those of the people who surround them (in Behar). The Hindus admit their claim to antiquity. Their designation in the Shastras is Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater. They are wanderers; they make baskets and mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings on it. They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling all dead bodies. They eat all animals which have died a natural death, and are particularly fond of pork of this description. “Notwithstanding profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white.” The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers. Travelers speak of them as “gypsies.” A specimen which we have of their language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English gypsy, and be called pure Romany. Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective gypsydom, Domnipana. D in Hindustani is found as r in English gypsy speech,—e.g., doi, a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as roi. Now in common Romany we have, even in London,—