and ISLANDERS of Amav 1 



known at prefent by our countrymen in the weft of India* Mr. Malet, 

 now refident at Ptina on the part of the Britijh government-^ procured 

 at my requeft the Sanganian letters, which are a fort of Nagar}, and 

 a fpetimen of their language, which is apparently derived, like other 

 Indian dialects, from the Sanfcrit ; nor can I doubt, from the descriptions^ 

 which I have received, of their perfons and manners, that they are Pameras, 

 Sis the Brabmans call them, or outcaft Hindus, immemorially feparated from 

 the reft of the nation, It feems agreed, that the lingular people, called Egyp- 

 tians, and, by corruption, Gypfes, paffed the Mediterranean immediately from 

 Egypt; and their motley language, of which Mr. Grellmann ex- 

 hibits a copious vocabulary, contains fo many Sanfcrit words, that 

 their Indian origin can hardly be doubted : the authenticity of that 

 vocabulary feems eftablifhed by a multitude of Gypfy words, as angar? 

 tharcoal, eapjth, wood, pdr r a bank, bhu, earth, and a hundred more, 

 for which the collector of them could find no parallel in the vulgar dialect of 

 Jiindujldn, though we know them to be pure Sanfcrit fcarce changed in a 

 Single letter. A very ingenious friend, to whom this remarkable fact was 

 imparted, fuggefted to me, that thofe very words might have been taken 

 from old Egyptian, and that the Gypfies were Troglodytes from the rocks near 

 Thebes, where a race of banditti ftill refemble them in their habits and fea- 

 tures % but, as we have no other evidence of fo ftrong an affinity between 

 the popular dialects of old Egypt and India, it feems more probable, that the 

 Gypfies y whom the Italians call Zingaros, were no other than Zinganians, 

 as M. D'Anville alfo writes the word, who might, in fome piratical ex- 

 pedition, have landed on the coaft of Arabia or Africa, whence they might 

 have rambled to Egypt, and at length have migrated or been driven into 

 Europe. To the kindnefs of Mr, Ma let I am alfo indebted for an account 

 of" the Boras ; a remarkable race of men inhabiting chiefly the cities of 



