The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India,...

The Kanjars and Berias are the typical gipsy castes of India, and have been supposed to be the parents of the European gipsies. On this point Mr. Nesfield writes: “The commonly received legend is that multitudes of Kanjars were driven out of India by the oppressions of Tamerlane, and it is inferred that the gipsies of Europe are their direct descendants by blood, because they speak like them a form of the Hindi language.”17 Sir G. Grierson states:18 “According to the Shāh-nāma, the Persian monarch Bahrām Gaur received in the fifth century from an Indian king 12,000 musicians who were known as Lūris, and the Lūris or Lūlis, that is gipsies, of modern Persia are the descendants of these.” These people were also called Lutt, and hence it was supposed that they were the Indian Jāts. Sir G. Grierson, however, shows it to be highly improbable that the Jāts, one of the highest castes of cultivators, could ever have furnished a huge band of professional singers and dancers. He on the contrary derives the gipsies from the Dom tribe:19 “Mr. Leland has made a happy suggestion that the original gipsies may have been Doms of India. He points out that Romany is almost letter for letter the same as Domni (डोमनी), the plural of Dom. Domni is the plural form in the Bhojpuri dialect of the Bihāri language. It was originally a genitive plural; so that Romany-Rye, ‘A gipsy gentleman,’ may be well compared with the Bhojpuri Domni Rai, ‘A king of the Doms.’ The Bhojpuri-speaking Doms are a famous race, and they have many points of resemblance with the gipsies of Europe.

Thus they are darker in complexion than the surrounding Bihāris, are great thieves, live by hunting, dancing and telling fortunes, their women have a reputation for making love-philtres and medicines to procure abortion, they keep fowls (which no orthodox Hindu will do), and are said to eat carrion. They are also great musicians and horsemen. The gipsy grammar is closely connected with Bhojpuri, and the following mongrel, half-gipsy, half-English rhyme will show the extraordinary similarity of the two vocabularies:20