Rom . . . A gypsy.
Romni . . . A gypsy wife.
Romnipen . . . Gypsydom.
Of this word rom I shall have more to say. It may be observed that there are in the Indian Dom certain distinctly-marked and degrading features, characteristic of the European gypsy, which are out of keeping with the habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the caliphs. Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making baskets, eating carrion, being given to drunkenness, does not agree with anything we can learn of the Jāts. Yet the European gypsies are all this, and at the same time “horsey” like the Jāts. Is it not extremely probable that during the “out-wandering” the Dom communicated his name and habits to his fellow-emigrants?
The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other European gypsies appears to link them with the Luri of Persia. These are distinctly gypsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves, fortune-tellers, and minstrels. The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that about the year 420 a.d. Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels, male and female, called Luri. Though lands were allotted to them, with corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds. Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:—
“They bear a marked affinity to the gypsies of Europe. [335] They speak a dialect peculiar to themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping and pilfering. Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and monkeys that are broke in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks. In each company there are always two or three members who profess . . . modes of divining, which procure them a ready admission into every society.”
This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and monkeys, identifies them with the Ričinari, or bear-leading gypsies of Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania. A party of these lately came to England. We have seen these Syrian Ričinari in Egypt. They are unquestionably gypsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied the early migration of Jāts and Doms.
The Nāts or Nuts are Indian wanderers, who, as Dr. J. Forbes Watson declares, in “The People of India,” “correspond to the European gypsy tribes,” and were in their origin probably identical with the Luri. They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents. They eat everything, except garlic. There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by travelers as “gypsies.” They are traveling merchants or peddlers. Among all these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in England. This slang extends even into Persia. Each tribe has its own, but the name for the generally spoken lingua franca is Rom.
It has never been pointed out, however, by any writer, that there is in Northern and Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded, even by the Nāts and Doms and Jāts themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly gypsy. There are, however, such wanderers, and the manner in which I became aware of their existence was, to say the least, remarkable. I was going one day along the Marylebone Road when I
met a very dark man, poorly clad, whom I took for a gypsy; and no wonder, as his eyes had the very expression of the purest blood of the oldest families. To him I said,—