10. A Comparative Vocabulary of the Language of 
European Gypsies or Romnichal, and 
Colloquial Hindustani. 
By W. KIRKPATRICK. 
According to the Shah Nameh of Firdausi it was during 
the fourth or fifth century a.p. that Behram Gour (A.D. 420) 
received into Persia from India some ten or twelve thousand 
musicians of both sexes who were known as Liris. It had 
been reported to him that the indigent classes of his kingdom 
q ; 
assigned an appropriate residence, just as to-day we are 
attempting to settle the Doms near Gorakhpur or the Haburas 
near Aligarh. . 
‘taking their asses they should load them with their chattels 
“and support themselves by means of their songs and the 
‘‘ strumming of their silken bows.’? The Liris agreeably to 
this mandate ‘‘ now wander about the world seeking employ- 
“ment, associating with dogs and wolves, and thieving on. the 
“road by day and by night.’’ Thus wrote Firdausi nine 
hundred years ago! 2 ‘bei 
e Gypsies in Persia to this day are called Liiris . 
Another Arabian historian, Hamza of Ispahan, we have it on 
the authority of De Goeje confirms this fifth-century Liri 
migration. Hamza appears to have written some fifty years 
earlier than Firdausi, and this author relates that Behram 
Gour caused 10,000 musicians called Zott to be sent from India 
! See ‘‘ Contribution to the History of the Gypsies’’ by M. J. De 
Goeje—in MacRitchie’s ‘‘ Gypsies of India. : 
