284 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XVI, 
Bukhara, what is called “gypsy snes oa is merely a jargon, 
a gypsified fo orm of local idiom. It is nah synthetic and 
can be dismembered into several parts as follow — 
a. A number of words of distinctly faainn origin, which 
may or may n not be the remnants of the original gypsy language, 
on the assumption that it was of Indian stock. 
The chief bulk of the jargon is based on the grammar 
and vocabulary of the language spoken by the people Se 
their real signification i is forgotten. They are the chief means 
of producing various generic names of whch gypsies are very 
ford (these will be discussed later on). It seems quite likely 
that more stable combinations can undergo a secondary gypsi 
fication in one of these ways, and it may be the case with a 
cotisaeabie number of words which do not bear any ety- 
mological analysis. 
he words of spurious origin just mentioned above. 
d, Stray words picked up from different languages. 
e. Words of artificial, seabrmnn rie oe mostly borrowed 
from Persian or Arabic. It is ssible to state now with 
any degree of srgireia whether re aera ok them from the 
secret code of dervishes, beggars and thieves, or the last- 
mentioned worthies aioe benefited from the lexical treasure 
of that tribe. Anyho ere are many similar conventional 
codes in use of several Meals -corporations, and the best known 
of them are Zargari used by goldsmiths, and Yezdi which 
serves the same purpose for cloth-merchants. Such are words 
like terigho, og male the Arabic tariq; talkhaki, from 
the Persian talkh, bitte 
For examples of ‘all ‘nas classes I may refer the reader to 
the vocabulary published abe where every word is marked 
by the above letters a, b, ¢ 
rom the point of Linguists psychology ae pe jargons 
can be very quaint occasionally. The tribe 1 no means 
backward in acquiring the languages of ins Spl they meet 
in every day-life. Gypsies in this part of Persia are quite at 
ease with Persian, Turkish and Kurdish, the chief languages 
used here. They speak quite correctly and, as appears to a 
stranger, far better sfeaex “ ey speak their own language, which, 
as I have pointed out in my previous paper, they reserve 
exclusively for occasions e whe they want not to be under- 
