This paper was published in 1875, when M. Paul Bataillard had the benefit of my letter to the Academy; and apparently its main object is to prove that he preceded me in identifying the Gypsies with the “Djatte” (Jats). It is divided into three parts, which are four. No. 1 contains the author’s reclamation and his notice of Professor de Goeje; No. 2 works out more fully his own theory of Gypsy origin; No. 3 contains a “certain and definitive explanation of the word Tsigane”; and No. 4, by way of colophon and endowment of research, thrusts forward certain preachments upon the direction of future inquiries for the benefit of us rude practical men.
Of No. 1, I have already treated, and content myself with energetically objecting to the statement that all who have treated about the peoples of the Indine Valley have imagined either a possible or a probable rapport between the Jats (not Juth) and the Gypsies. M. Paul Bataillard again shows that in 1850, when my paper was published in 1849, neither he nor Professor Fleischer knew aught concerning the modern Sindhi Jats, a mere section of the race, save the corruption of a name. They were ignorant of its extensive habitat scattered between the Indus mouths and the Tatar Steppes. They had never learned that it speaks its own peculiar dialect, which is like that of the Gypsies and the Sindhi to a certain extent, Persico-Indian.
Part No. 2 becomes much more sensational. We find that our critic’s ideas have grown, and that the antiquity of the Gypsies in South-Eastern Europe extends deep into the misty regions of the past. In 1872 he merely alluded to the high importance of the ethnic name Sindho or Sinto (feminine Sindhi; plurals Sindhe and Sindhiyan), “meaning the great.” Now he would identify them with the aborigines of Lemnos, those “lords of Vulcan” the [Greek: Σιντιες: Sinties]—a word generally understood to signify robbers ([Greek: σινομαι: sinomai]). The connexion is brought about because Homer describes these metal-workers as speaking a wild speech ([Greek: αγριοφωνοι: agriophônoi]), and because Hellanicus of Lesbos derives them from Thrace. Two independent authorities—the original hypothesist Dr. Johannes Gottlieb Hasse in 1803, and M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in 1847—had suggested an idea which M. Paul Bataillard borrowed and adopted. The Tsigane represent, we are assured, not only the Sicani of Sicily, but also the [Greek: Σιγυναι: Sigynai, Σιγυνοι: Sigynoi, Σιγιννοι: Siginnoi], whom Herodotus places in the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and Thrace. The broad gap of years is bridged over, in the teeth of M. Paspati, by means of certain mediæval Byzantine heretics, the [Greek: Αθιγγανοι: Athinganoi], Manichæans like the Albigenses, the Paulicians, and especially the dwellers in Bosnia and its neighbourhood, also called Athigarii, Atingarii, Anthingarii, and Atingani; and this only because certain of the modern Greeks call their Gypsies Athinganoi ([Greek: Αθιγγανοι: Athinganoi]). Brosset[134] notices that in the eleventh century, when King Bagrat visited Constantinople, he there heard a marvellous and wholly incredible thing; namely, that a tribe of the Samaritans descended from Simon Magus, and called Atsinkan, were still infamous for their evil-doings and sorceries. And then we have a silly story of how the monk St. George of Athos rendered all their poisons of no account.
Moreover, we are told, if the modern Tsigane represent the Sinties and the Siginnoi, they must, ergo, stand in the same relationship to certain mysterious tribes inhabiting the Caucasus and Western Asia, Egypt, the Levantine Islands, and the Danubian basin. Thus we see the origin of the Telchini, the Chalybes, and other “Cabiric peoples.” The latter has the disadvantage of being purely Semitic, Kabír meaning “the great” applied to the twelve Dii majores of the Phœnicians who sent forth Kadmos (El Kadín) = the old or the great.[135] But let that pass. Our author proves his fact by showing that these races, like the modern Romá, were makers of weapons, especially the assegai or javelin; whilst the Cabiri and the Telchini were renowned for music and soothsaying. And how not recognize the Troglodytic Sibyls of Asia Minor and Egypt, of Greece, and especially Thrace, in the pure Gypsy, when [Greek: Σιβυλλα: Sibylla] is only a form of [Greek: Σιβυνη: Sibynê] or [Greek: Ζιβυνη: Zibynê], which naturally derives from [Greek: Σιγυνη: Sigynê], [Greek: Σιγυννος: Sigynnos] = Tsigane? How not perceive that the Egyptian prophetesses turned into black pigeons by Herodotus, and the doves of Dodona, were not identical with the Romní?
This becomes a disease—Tsigane on the brain; from which our author evidently suffers in an acute form—so acute as to render his imagination most lively. To the unimaginative ethnologist the “Sindhi” are simply the Sindh tribes of Gypsies, so called from the Sindhu, that mighty stream which gave to Europe a name for the Indian Peninsula. Hence, indeed, some philologists would derive the Spanish word Zincale (Zinkale), making it a compound of Sindh and Kálo (plural Kále, black) = dark men of Sindh. Rejecting this treatment, we must consider it a tribal name like Karáchi (= lower Sindhian), Helebi (Aleppine), Lúri (from Lúristán), and many others into which the great Jat nation is divided.
But whilst we reject particulars, we must beware how we treat the general theory. Tradition and ethnological peculiarities, far stronger than philological resemblances or coincidences, tend to prove that the earliest metal-workers and weapon-makers were an Indine race whose immigration long preceded the movement of the last ethnic wave, the Gypsy of history. Herodotus notices a caste or corporation of ambulant founders and metal-workers which came from Asia, possibly belonging to the age called by M. de Mortillet de la chaudronnerie, when the hammer took the place of simple fusion. Modern research has shown that these prehistoric artisans affected Gypsy habits like the caldereros (coppersmiths) of the Romá in later ages. They had no permanent abodes; their ateliers were not inside the towns, but en plein champ near inhabited centres; here they fashioned their new and recast their old metal, bartering their works for furs, hides, amber, and other articles of local provenance. Hence M. Émile Burnouf[136] assumes these wandering workmen of the Bronze Age to have been a Gypsy race; while the remarkable similarity, I may almost say the identity, of the alloy suggests that it was the produce of a single people. We must, however, be careful how we accept his derivation from Banca and Malacca of the prehistoric tin required for bronze. It would first be supplied by the Caucasus mines to a race of workmen migrating along the southern base from the West to the East. The next source of supply, before passing to Southern France, Spain, and the Cassiterides, would be North-Western Arabia. The Book of Numbers[137] distinctly mentions the metal, placing it between iron and lead, as part of the spoils taken by the children of Israel from their cousins the Midianites (circ. b.c. 1450); and the two Khedivial expeditions (a.d. 1877-78) have brought home proofs that it may still be found there. Indeed, I have a suspicion that the “broken” people of Western Arabia are descended from the ancient Gypsies who may have worked the gold mines of Midian.
Part No. 3 corrects Professor de Goeje, M. Fagnan, and myself in our several explanations of Tsigane. The exaggerated value attributed by M. Paul Bataillard to his own “typical proof and the material confirmation of all his system” seems to have hindered his revelation; and he insists upon it naïvely as if it were proof of Holy Writ. Its venerable “hypothetical origin” must be sought in the root chináv, meaning to thrust, throw, fight, cut, kill, write, and eject saliva. It survives in the word Sagaie or Zagaie (our assegai): the latter, when split in two, contains a first part similar to sag-itta, and a second like gais (gœ-sum), the heavy, barbed Gallic javelin; whilst the whole resembles the Amazonian Sagaris, an axe.
In the name of the Prophet—figs! This dreamery is ushered in as usual by a whole page of discursive matter. The debased Romaic [Greek: κατζιβελος: katzibelos], a “maker of javelins,” used by a Byzantine poet of the middle fourteenth century, is shown = Sigynos = Tsigane. Kilinjirides, a Græcised form of the Turkish Kilij-ji, or sword-maker, is the same word. Let me here note that the “pure Turkish term Kaldji,” still used at Rhodes, is not the same as Kilij-ji; it is the bastard compound Arabic and Turkish Kala'-jí, a tinsmith. Such are some of the linguistic will-o’-the-wisps which have, I fear, habitually misled our critic.
I must now consider the origin of the corrupted “typical term” Tsigane, which M. Paul Bataillard has converted into a “generic name.” The old and obsolete derivations of the Zingaro, which with various modifications prevails throughout Europe, are the following.[138] Ciga or Siga, the seaport of Mauretania Cæsariensis, or the Ciga or Cija River mentioned by Lucan; the Magian Cineus; Zeugitania Regio (Zeugis); Singara, the Mesopotamian city; Zigera, a Thracian settlement; the Zinganes, a tribe inhabiting the Indus Delta (?); the Zigier Province in Asia Minor; and “the bird Cinclo” (motacilla or wagtail), a “vagrant bird which builds no nest,” and therefore gave rise to the term Cinli or Cingary. Less absurd is the derivation from Singus, or Cingus, the chief of a horde under “Tamerlane,” who employed these men, not as combatants, but camp-followers and to export trains[139] (a.d. 1401). Arabshah, the biographer of the great Tatar Amír, recounts a contrivance by which in a.d. 1406 he rid his city (Samarkand) of the rebellious Zingaros; and the account of this race shows a certain correspondence with the Gypsies. Hence, probably, Borrow (The Zincali) tells us that “the Eastern Gypsies are called Zingarri.” The word is quite unknown to Turkey and Persia. In 1402 they accompanied the Sultan Báyezíd on his invasion of Europe along the Danube, and thus settled in Bulgaria and Old Servia.
What we know for certain is that the Gypsies have been known in Persia from time immemorial as Chingáneh, [Persian: چِنگانه]. Professor de Goeje writes the word Tsjengán (Chengán), and would explain it by the Persian plural of Tsenj, a musician, a dancer. Is this word intended for Chang, a harp, or for Zang, in Arabic Zanj, a Kálo, a “black man,” as the Gypsy is still called in England? Chingáneh in Syria becomes Jingáneh, the Semites having no ch; and the term now applies, not to the Gypsies generally, but to a small and special tribe. The Greek and Romaic [Greek: Ατζιγγανος: Atzinganos] and [Greek: Αθιγγανος: Athinganos] corruptions of Chingáneh, are, as we have seen by Atsinkan, as old at Constantinople as the eleventh century. In Turkish the word is written as in Persian, but the pronunciation changes to Chingyáneh; M. Paspati adopts Tchinghiané, the Turco-French corruption, with the e = eh. Hence evidently the Hungarian Czigan (Czigany, Czigányok, Czingaricus, etc.), and the Transylvanian Cingani, which appears in writings of the fifteenth century; the former evidently engendered M. Bataillard’s bastard Tsigane. The Poles turned Chingáneh into Cygan (Cyganaeh, Cyganskiego, etc.), and the Russians into Zigan. Here we see the Italian Ciano, Cingano, and Zingano, the older forms of Zingaro and the Portuguese Cigano.