444 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [December, 1914. 



number of Persian words). The few genuine Gypsy words 

 preserved were preserved with the special object of concealing 

 their ! B secrets ' 9 ; and thus the speech of scattered families 

 possessing no poetry (even the possibility of this seems to them 

 now ridiculous), nor anything deserving the name of "folk- 

 lore p ' , lay at the mercy of every chance influence. (The same is 

 the case with the Arab tribes of the Central Persian Desert.) 

 Judging from the state of their language, one may legitimately 

 suppose that they were the first emigrants, who came to Persia 



in ancient times in small numbers before the main body of 

 Gypsies migrated. 



Yet, notwithstanding many phonetic changes in their cor- 

 rupted language the origin of nearly all their words can be 

 traced to an Indian source. 



I am not able to share the view of Mr. Dames in his notes 

 on the short vocabularies Mr. Sykes (Journal of Anthropolog. 

 Inst, of Grt. Brit, etc., v. XXXII, 1902, p. 339, and v. XXXVI, 

 1906, p. 302), that this jargon is entirely of artificial origin, for 

 I may point out that neither of the vocabularies is a safe ground 

 for forming an opinion, being full of mistakes. It is very hard 

 indeed to obtain from the average Gypsy any adequate linguis- 

 tic material ; their stupidity is sometimes beyond all descrip- 

 tions. Ask a Gypsy: "How do you say 'horse' in your 

 language ? " He will answer in 99 cases out of 100— " A horse 

 is good, is tall, is cheap " etc., but never directly to the question. 

 It is, I suppose, a common feature of many Gypsy tribes 

 incapacity for abstraction. And Prof. S. Macalister says just 

 the same about Syrian Zotts: that such linguistic inquiries 

 among them require particular cautiousness, and even the most 

 " learned Persian", who compiled the vocabularies for Mr. 

 Sykes, can fall into many mistakes. Such is the case, I believe, 

 e.g. with a very strange form in the vocabulary of Gypsies from 

 Sirjan and Zirutt— "marzi " meaning "I." I dare wager 

 that the Gypsy, who was asked : " How do you say ■ I ' ? 

 answered "I am a man", "man marzi {mardi)-um" {d is 

 pronounced often very softly). The same with the word shay- 

 tumi, which occurs many times in the vocabulary in very 

 different significations. The Gypsies use this word very often 

 for anything whose name they do not know. It means simp 1 :' 

 " thing, something", and = Arabic word 'skey' 



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140) 



converse with them in their language. 



The case is just the same with the so-called Mdkta or 

 chtm of Baluchistan. Mr. Denys Bray says (op. cit., p. __., 

 '•It is an artificial jargon, invented on the basis of the language 

 ot the people among whom they (Gypsies) live, and which they 

 more especially employ when thev want to keep their meaning 

 to themselves. And yet so successfully and universally is the 

 jargon used, that it seems doubtful whether its artificiality 



