312 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



other. Besides the genuine Indian -words to be found in the language 

 of the gipsies, they all contain a large intermixture of foreign tongues, 

 consisting of words of the languages of the people they dwell or have 

 dwelt amongst, of Persian, of Arabic, of Turkish, of Greek, of Hun- 

 garian, and of various Sclavonian tongues ; these being, in some cases, 

 as, for example, in the Persian, more numerous than the Hindu 

 words. This is what was to be looked for from four hundred years' 

 residence in Europe, and their sojourn among Oriental nations in their 

 necessarily slow journey westward. The Indian words which exist in 

 the language of the gipsies are by no means so numerous as the Latin 

 ones which are found in the Welsh and Armorican, or in the Irish and 

 Gaelic, and there will be found wanting in the gipsy language classes 

 of words which are indispensable toward proving it of Indian parent- 

 age. Of the migration of the gipsies from India, there is assuredly no 

 record in Indian history, neither have we of their arrival in any Asiat- 

 ic country before they reached, JEurope. In both France and Italy 

 their first appearance was in an inland city, in both of which they be- 

 gan at once to tell fortunes ; a fact which supposes, of course, some ac- 

 quaintance with the language of the people whose fortunes "they pre- 

 tended to predict. From these two facts, it may be inferred that the 

 gipsies were in France and Italy for some time before their appearance 

 in Paris and Bologna. Most probably they came to Italy from Wal- 

 lachia, through Servia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia, crossing the Adriatic ; 

 but what internal commotion led to their adventure is unknown. 

 From Italy, where they were seen five years before they reached 

 France, they probably found their way into the latter country. If the 

 gipsies were originally an Indian people (and there is no other evi- 

 dence of their having been so than a few words of an Indian language), 

 they were most probably captives, carried off by some western invader 

 with the hope of peopling his own desert lands. I must come to the 

 conclusion that the gipsies, when above four centuries ago they first 

 appeared in Western Europe, were already composed of a mixture of 

 many different races, and that the present gipsies are still more mon- 

 grel. In the Asiatic portion of their lineage, there is probably a small 

 infusion of Hindu blood ; but this, I think, is the utmost that can be 

 predicated of their Indian pedigree. Strictly speaking, they are not 

 more Hindus in lineage than they are Persians, Turks, Wallachians, or 

 Europeans ; for they are a mixture of all these, and that in propor- 

 tions impossible to be ascertained." 



