Linguistic Survey of India - Gipsy Languages.

Abstract

Migratory tribes are found all over India, and are of different kinds. Some of them, like the Pendharis, are descended from adventurers and individuals belonging to various castes and trades; others, like the Banjaras, Ods, and so on, are occupational units, who wander all over the country in pursuance of their trade; others again are much of the same kind as the Gipsies of Europe, tumblers, jugglers, acrobats, or thievesand robbers, who have come under the Criminal Tribes Act. It has become customary to call these tribes Gipsies, but this designation does not Name imply any connexion between them and the Gipsies of Europe. The word Gipsy, which is, as is Well known, a corruption of Egyptian, was originally applied to those well-known migratory tribes •who began to make their name known and feared in Europe from the beginning of the 15th century, because they described themselves as coming from Egypt. The word has- them, also come to be used to denote other peoples of similar, Migratory, habits, and this is the sense in which it has been used in this Survey. The Gipsy Languages are, accordingly, dialects spoken by the vagrant tribes of India. Our information about these forms of speech is necessarily limited. Many of these language es vagrants simply speak the language of their neighbors Others are bilingual or even multilingual, adopting the speech of the district where they happen to stay in all their dealings with outsiders, but retaining a peculiar dialect of their own when talking among themselves. For this thislatter purpose many of these tribes have also developed a secret argot, which they commonly call ParsI, { Persian,’ and they are naturally shy of initiating others into it. These argots will be dealt with below. They have not anything to do with grammar, but are based on some dialect, which may be designated as the. home tongue of the tribe.. Moreover, such tribes as have not developed any artificial argot, often have a dialect of their own. Such forms of. speech cannot, of course, be expected to present the same consistency as ordinary vernaculars.