Chapter VI

The Gipseys are of the Caste called Suders.

We come now to the position we hoped to substantiate, viz. that the Gipseys are of the lowest class of Indians, namely, Parias; or, as they are called in Hindostan, Suders.

The whole great nation of Indians is known to be divided into four ranks or stocks, which are called by a Portuguese name, castes, each of which has its own particular subdivisions. Of these castes, the Bramin is the first: the second contains the Tschechteries or Setreas: the third consists of the Beis or Wasziers: the fourth is the caste of the just-mentioned Suders; who upon the Peninsula of Malabar, where their condition is the same as in Hindostan, are called Parias or Parier.

The relative situation of these four castes, and the grounds of their difference, rest on the Indian fable of the Creation. This relates, that the God who created Bruma, ordained that the Bramin should proceed out of Bruma’s mouth; the Tschechterie out of his arms; the Beis out of his legs; and the Suder from his feet. As Bruma afterwards allotted the employments of each of these stocks, he appointed the first to seek after knowledge, to give instruction, and to take care of religion; the second was to serve in war; the third was, as well as the Bramin, to cultivate science, but to attend particularly to the breeding of cattle and agriculture: the caste of Suders was destined to be subservient to the Bramins, the Tschechteries, and the Beis. These Suders are held in the greatest contempt: they are considered infamous and unclean, from their occupations; and they are abhorred because they eat flesh, the three other castes living entirely on vegetables.

Of this very caste, as will appear by the following comparison, our Gipseys are composed.

We have seen that the Gipseys are in the highest degree filthy, and disgusting; and with regard to character, of the most depraved hearts: that they are thievish, liars, and fraudulent to excess:—and these are exactly the qualities of the Suders. Baldæus says, “The Pareas are a filthy race, in a word, a contemptible stinking people; a wicked crew, who in winter steal much cattle, kill them, and sell the hides.” It is again related in the Danish Mission Intelligence, “Nobody can deny that the Bareier are the dregs and refuse of all the Indians: they have wicked dispositions, are thievish, arrant liars, are intractable with good usage, require to be kept in order by fear and blows, and held under continual restraint.” Moreover, Neuhof assures us, “The Parruas are full of every kind of dishonesty; they do not consider lying and cheating to be sinful, as they have no other maxim or custom among them.” The Gipsey’s solicitude to conceal his language, is likewise a striking Indian trait. “Custom,” says Pallas, of the Indians round Astrakan, “has rendered them to the greatest degree suspicious about their language, insomuch that I never was able to obtain a small vocabulary from them.”

In addition to the foregoing, the Gipseys love to intoxicate themselves; they are particularly fond of brandy, because it more speedily answers their purpose than any other liquor. Among the Suders we find this inclination is universal; though other Indians do not commit such excess, or very seldom, and then privately.

What has been further said with respect to the immoral life of the Gipseys, agrees perfectly with the Suders. “Their wives and daughters,” says Neuhof, “make no difficulty of yielding up their persons, for money, to any sort of people, be they of what country or religion soever; as the inclination of this tribe tends more to voluptuousness, than towards diligence or industry.”

With regard to Gipsey marriages, it has been asserted, that it is a matter of indifference to them whether the party be the nearest relation or an utter stranger, or, as Salmon expresses himself, the nearest relations cohabit like beasts with each other; and as to education, that their children grow up in the most shameful neglect, without either discipline or instruction. All this is precisely the case with the Pariars. In the Journals of the Missionaries already quoted, it is said, “With respect to matrimony, they act like the beasts; and their children are brought up without restraint or information.”

Gipseys are fond of being about horses; so are the Suders in India, for which reason they are commonly employed as horsekeepers by the Europeans resident in that country.

The Gipseys were formerly employed as flayers, hangmen, and executioners, all over Hungary and Transylvania; and they still readily perform those offices whenever called upon. In like manner, in India, no one who is not of the caste of Suders will on any account transact that kind of business.

We have seen that the Gipseys hunt after cattle which have died of distempers, in order to feed on them; and where they can provide more of the flesh than is sufficient for one day’s consumption, dry it in the sun: such is likewise a constant custom with the Pariars in India. It “is their office,” according to the accounts we have of them, “to remove carrion, which they cut up; part they boil fresh and eat, other parts they dry in pieces, by the heat of the sun, for their future provision.”

Hitherto the accounts of the Gipseys and Suders perfectly coincide. Even the before-mentioned smiths and dancing girls are of this caste: and as they before shewed, in general, from the similarity of their make, that they were of Indian extraction, so in this instance they give particular evidence, that they are descendants from the lowest class.

But there are still some further traits relating to the Gipseys; we shall now examine whether they also are to be found among the Suders. Of these the first is, that the Gipseys always choose their place of residence near some village or city; very seldom within the village or city, even though there may be no order to prevent it: as is the case in Moldavia, Wallachia, and all parts of Turkey. Even the more improved Gipseys, as those in Transylvania, who have long since discontinued their wandering mode of life, and might, with permission from government, reside within the cities, yet rather choose to build their huts in some bye-place, without their limits. This custom seems to be a remnant of their original Suder education; it being usual, all over India, for the Suders to have their huts without the villages of the other castes, and in retired places near their cities.

Further, with regard to the Gipseys’ religion, we may recollect, from what has been said, that their sense of it is very confined, and that they have not the least degree of steadiness in it. To the Gipseys, every persuasion is the same; as often as he meets with a different one, he changes his opinions. To-day he receives the sacrament as a Lutheran; next Sunday, from a Roman-catholic; and perhaps before the end of the week partakes of the communion in a Reformed church. Yet the greater part of them do not even go so far as this, but live without any religion at all, and are, as Tollius says, worse than heathens. The more wonderful such an appearance is—of a whole people being so void of and indifferent about religion—the more weight it carries with it to confirm their Indian origin, when all this is found to be literally true of the Suders. “This race,” says Rogerius, of the Suders in the kingdom of Surat, “seems to be neither heathens nor Mahometans; they live on in their own way, without any religion, or worshipping of God. There are some, it is true, who imitate the other castes in an outward shew of religion, and appoint priests for themselves; but they neither frequent the pagodas of the higher castes, nor have any of their own: and as to the choice of their deities, every one conforms to the custom of the place where he lives, or happens to remain a short time, exactly the same as the Gipseys.”

If people, in reflecting on the emigration of the Gipseys, are not determined to imagine that they were actuated by a blind impulse, to break up at once, and quit their native country; no cause can be assigned for their retreat from thence so plausible as the war of Timur Beg in India. The date of their arrival marks it very plainly. It was in the years 1408 and 1409 that this conqueror ravaged India; and having persuaded himself, as well as his followers, that he had undertaken the expedition against India for the purpose of disseminating the Mahometan religion, his war was oppressive enough to occasion such an emigration. Not only every one who made any resistance was destroyed, and such as fell into the enemy’s hands, though quite defenceless, were made slaves, but in a short time these very slaves, to the number of a hundred thousand, were put to death. As in consequence an universal panic took place, nobody being secure that it might not be his own fate in a short time, what could be more natural than that a great number of terrified inhabitants should endeavour to save themselves by flight?

An objection naturally occurs, that when this supposed flight took place, had it been true, not Gipseys only, or the lowest class of people, but with them all sorts of Indians, of superior rank, would have come among us. But this argument will fall of itself, when we reflect on the prepossession which the three higher castes of Indians entertain for their country. They ascribe an extraordinary degree of holiness to it, and believe it to be the only country thought, by the Creator of the universe, worthy for such sanctified people as the Bramins, Tschechteries, and Beis, to dwell in. They would rather suffer torture and death, than quit this land, chosen by the Almighty himself for their residence, to go and dwell any-where else. Moreover a Suder is, in their estimation, the most execrable being in the world; and the least intercourse with him would be defiling and degrading their high characters, which, to them, would be more dreadful than death. Wherefore it was a moral impossibility for those of a higher caste to have any thing in common with a Suder, or that they should have made an united retreat. Finally, by putting themselves into the power of the Suders, with whom they live constantly in a state of discord and inveteracy, they would have hazarded a greater danger, than by patiently risking their fate from the hands of their common enemy. If any of the higher ranks of Indians did withdraw themselves, on account of the troubles, it is probable they retired southwards, to people of their own sort, the Mahrattas.

As every part to the northward and eastward was beset by the enemy, and no passage left in those directions for escaping, it seems most probable that the countries below Multan, to the mouth of the Indus, were the first asylum and rendezvous of the fugitive Suders. Here they were safe; and so remained, till Timur returned from his victories on the Ganges. Then it was that they first entirely quitted the country; and, probably, with them a considerable number of the proper inhabitants about the Indus, which will explain the meaning of their original name, Ciganen, or, according to the German mode of speaking, Zigeuner. For if it was in the country of the Zinganen that these terrified fugitives collected; and they afterwards drew a considerable number of the Zinganen themselves along with them, nothing could be more easy or natural than that the people who had assembled from the general wreck should take the name of the greater number.

By what route they came to us, cannot be ascertained: if they went straight through the southern Persian deserts of Sigistan, Makran, and Kirman, along the Persian Gulph to the mouth of the Euphrates, thence they might get, by Bassora, into the great deserts of Arabia, afterwards into Arabia Petræa, and so arrive in Egypt, by the isthmus of Suez. They must certainly have been in Egypt before they reached us; otherwise we cannot account for the report that they were Egyptians. In what manner they were afterwards transported to Europe is also an obscure research: perhaps it was effected by means of the Turks, who, being at that time fully employed with the Grecian empire, might permit the Gipseys to travel about with the rabble of Serdenjesti and Nephers, who were appointed to go on ravaging parties. However, all that can be said upon that subject is mere surmise. The chief aim in this Dissertation was, to prove that the Gipseys came from Hindostan, and that they were Suders, which it is hoped has been accomplished. When every thing, even the most fortuitous concomitant circumstances, but particularly that most decisive one—the similarity of their language to that of Hindostan, uniformly point out that extraction, we cannot believe them to belong to a different country, and to be descended from another people.