The Spanish Zincali is derived by Borrow from two Gypsy words meaning “Kále” (the black men) of Zend (Sind or Ind), a theory perfectly inadmissible. The Iberian Gitáno, now a term of opprobrium, is probably a survival of the racial name, and not a corruption of the older Egypciano, the Basque Egipcioac. The latter, evidently from Aigyptos, Ægyptus, Egypt, an “Egyptian,” is itself a corruption of Kupt, [Persian: کپط], in modern parlance a Copt. Hence the Turks also call their vagrants Kupti or Gupti. Hence also [Greek: Γυφτος: Gyphtos] in Romaic applies indifferently to a Gypsy or a blacksmith, and hence finally our Gypsy, which should be pronounced with a hard g, and written as by the older writers Gypsy. All four derive from a different root, the Egyptian.
As regards the German Zigeuner and its older forms Secane and Suyginer (fifteenth century), Professor de Goeje would derive it from Sjikâri (Syikári), as he writes Shekári, a huntsman, much reminding us of that diction which confounds “srimp” with “shrimp.” The word means a wanderer, and seems to derive from the root that gave us zig-zag. The Dutch call these Indians Heiden af Egyptiër’s; the French Égyptiens, but preferably Bohémiens, showing what they believed to be the last halting-place of the tribe before it passed on to Western Europe. A curious irony of fate has connected in the Gallic mind the old land of the Boii with all that is wild and unsettled, when its sons are the stiffest and the most priggish of the Austro-German beamter class.
Not a few commentators on the Bible[140] have believed the Gypsies to be that “mixed multitude” which has done so much for romantic ethnology. This medley, the Hebrew’s hasaphsuph, corresponding with the Arabic Habash (Abyssinian), we are told “went up also with the Jews out of Egypt.” The learned add that they marched eastward to India, became veritable Aryans, retraced their steps to Misraim, the two Egypts, upper and lower, and thence spread over Europe.
For the first set of words, Tsigane included, I hold Chingáneh to be the origin, owning at the same time my inability to determine the root or history of the word. For the second, whose type is Gitano, I think it probable that the wanderers may have modified their racial name Jat and its adjective Jatáni into the semblance of Egyptian at the time when they represented themselves to be descendants of the old Nile dwellers and to speak an Egyptian (Coptic) dialect. The Jugo-Slav tongues abound in similar instances of conversion, vernacular and significant terms being often applied to the older terms of conquered or occupied countries. For instance, Aurisina, the Roman station near Trieste, became Nabresina, from na-brek = ad montem.
Returning to M. Paul Bataillard, we find him declaring that the Gypsies are generically Chamites (descendants of Ham!), and specifically Kushites, “who lived long enough under the 'Aryas in the Indus region to lose their Kushite tongue and to adopt an Aryan dialect.” This immense assertion, made perfunctorily, as it were, and without acknowledgment of its source, is worthy of the eighteenth century and its “mixed multitude” borrowed from the Book of Exodus. What the learned Movers (Geschichte d. Phœnicier) said of the “Kushites” was that, originally from India, they migrated in prehistoric days westwards, allied themselves with the Semites, and became the peoples speaking such Aryo-Semitic tongues as the Egyptian and Coptic, Himyaritic and Ghíz. To believe that this also was the history of the Gypsy movement is to hold that, whilst other “Kushites” changed their physique and their morale, their eyes and hair, their cheekbones and figures generally, the Gypsies have remained pure Indians without a trace of other blood.
A word here upon this “Kushite” theory, which has been accepted by men of the calibre of Heinrich Brugsch Bey. It appears to be simply a labour-saving institution, in fact what algebraists call supposer un inconnu, a pure assumption which spares the pains of working out the origination of the so-called Aryo-Semitic races. These Kushites, who were they? Where are they mentioned in history or legend as emigrants from the plains of Hindustan to the north-eastern angle of Africa? What traces have they left upon the long route across Western Asia which connects the Indus with the Nile? How came it that, without marking their exodus by a single vestige of civilization, they began at once to hew the obelisks and build the pyramids in their new home, the chef-d’œuvres of artistic Egypt’s golden age? No answer to such objections as these.
In Part No. 4, concluding the paper, M. Paul Bataillard attempts to conciliate his “principal thesis” with the views of M. de Goeje. The Leyden professor opines that the first colonies of Djatts (Jats) were founded amongst the Persians and Arabs of the seventh century; and M. Fagnan also speaks of inscriptions in Buddhist characters treating of the Jats in the fourth and fifth centuries. The tribal name, corrupted by Arabization, appears in the “Canal of the Zott” (Zutt) near Babylon, and in the “Zott-land.” Families of “Zotts” were transplanted to Syrian Bosra, Bostra, or Old Damascus during the earliest Muslim conquests in the seventh century (circ. a.d. 670), not in the ninth (a.d. 855), as our author had determined. About a.d. 710 “Zotts” and Indians were transferred from the Indus to the Tigris (Khuzistán); and between a.d. 714 and 720 a certain number were sent with their four thousand buffaloes—“which make the lion fly (!)”—to colonize the Antioch regions. Hence possibly the name of the large tribe which is known in Egypt and elsewhere as “El H'aleb,” or “Helebi, the Aleppine.” They waxed powerful enough in their new possessions to contend with the Caliphat till a.d. 820-834, when they were subjugated, and some twenty-seven thousand were transplanted to Bagdad. Thence they were sent north-eastwards to Khánikin and westwards to Ayin-Zarba (?) in Syria, a place subsequently (a.d. 855) captured by the Byzantines; and finally the “Zott” and their belongings were carried off and dispersed throughout the empire.
So far so good. But our critic appends a rider to Professor de Goeje’s tale. He owns that this race, Zott or Jats, may have transformed itself into Gypsies—not difficult, as they were Gypsies. But he contends that they formed a feeble modern addition to his “Kushites,” to the race which was represented ab antiquo by the Sicani and Sinties et hoc genus omne.
Further let me note en passant the vulgar error now obsolete which, confounding Hindi with the Urdú-Zabán or camp dialect,[141] made the former a bastard modern tongue when its literature is as old as the earliest English and French. And here we may note that, while the Romni-chíb is in point of vocabulary a sister of the Hindi, the grammar of the noun with its survival of regular cases belongs to a more remote age. It is partly Prakrit and partly Sindhi, a dialect whose numerous harsh consonants make us suspect, despite Dr. Trumpp, a non-Aryan element. Besides the prehistoric occupation of the trans-Indine regions by the Indo-Scythians noticed in Alexander’s day, we find another dating from far later times. The Bactrian kingdom which became independent sixty-nine years after the great Macedonian’s death lasted one hundred and thirty years, and was destroyed about b.c. 126 by the “white Huns,” Chinese Tatars, who crossed the Jaxartes. Hence possibly the Dravidian Brahins still dwelling in the midst of Aryan populations. The apparent anomaly that the wild and vagrant Gypsies have preserved in Europe ancient forms which have died out in the old home has already been accounted for; I may also number amongst the causes of conservation the total want of a written character, which also proves the early date of the Gypsy exodus.