each other; and as to education, their children grow up in the most shameful neglect, without either discipline or instruction.
All this is precisely the case with the Pariars. In the journal of the Missionaries already quoted, it is said; “With respect to matrimony, they act like the beasts, and their children are brought up without restraint or information.” Gypsies are fond of being about horses, so are the Suders in India, for which reason, they are commonly employed as horse-keepers, by the Europeans resident in that country.”
We have seen that the Gypsies hunt after cattle which have died of distempers, in order to feed on them; and when they can procure more of the flesh than is sufficient for one day’s consumption, they dry it in the sun. Such is likewise a constant custom with the Pariars in India.
That the Gypsies, and natives of Hindostan, resemble each other in complexion, and shape is undeniable. And what is asserted of the young Gypsey girls rambling about with their fathers who are musicians, dancing with lascivious
and indecent gestures, to divert any person who is willing to give them a small gratuity for so acting, is likewise perfectly Indian. Sonnerat confirms this in the account he gives of the dancing girls of Surat.
Fortune-telling is practised all over the East; but the peculiar kind professed by the Gypsies, viz: chiromancy, constantly referring to whether the parties shall be rich or poor, happy or unhappy in marriage, &c. is no where met with but in India.
The account we have given of Gypsey smiths may be compared with the Indian, as related by Sonnerat in the following words: “The smith carries his tools, his shop, and his forge about with him, and works in any place where he can find employment; he erects his shop before the house of his employer, raising a low wall with beaten earth; before which, he places his hearth; behind this wall, he fixes two leathern bellows. He has a stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus is a pair of tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file. How
exactly does this accord with the description of the Gypsey smith!
We have seen that Gypsies always choose their place of residence near some village, or city, very seldom within them; even though there may not be any order to prevent it, as is the case in Moldavia, Wallachia, and all parts of Turkey. Even the more improved Gypsies in Transylvania, who have long since discontinued the wandering mode of life, and might, with permission from government, reside within the cities, rather choose to build their huts in some bye place, without their limits. This custom appears to be derived from their original Suder education; it being usual all over India, for the Sunders to have their huts without the villages of the other castes, and in retired places near their cities.
With respect to religion, it has appeared that the greater part of the Gypsies live without any profession of it; Tollius says, worse than heathens. The more wonderful it is, that a whole people should be so indifferent and void of religion, the more weight it carries with