Dedication

The tent of the Gypsies cannot offer one the facility of a computer, an electricity connection or enough room for academic life. Dr. Riccardo Tobanelli, who, having obtained a Doctoral Degree in Anthropology and Sociology in London, returned to Bangladesh, put his heart and soul into the process of arranging all the matierals and documentations, I have been able to collect over the years in their present order and sequence. 

Renato Rosso

Foreword

 Nomads in India 

Kalyan Kumar Chakravarty 

This volume has grown out of intense scholarly work, done over nearly two centuries among nomads by western scholars. The scholarship, however, reflects the Orientalist idea of Karl Marx, about Asiatics, reflected in his statement in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Òthey cannot represent themselves; they must be representedÓ. The representation is hegemonic, armed by a battery of ideological prejudices. The various articles in this volume have to be read in the backdrop of the British mission to establish political authority over Indian society, and, of the exteriority of representation by British Orientalists, standing outside the Indian context, existentially and intellectually. The accounts exclude and displace the real nomad for the represented nomad, who is seen as a dark, hovering, fringe presence in a colonised country, and as a criminal, cruel savage. Transcending the description of their life ways, comes out the constant attempt to classify the nomads under pejorative categories, be they religious mendicants like Bairagis or Jogis, wandering minstrels like Bauls, acrobats like Bazigars, bards like Bhats, professional beggars like Dewars, worshipper priests like Koravas, sorcerers like Kurumbas, magician priests like Pradhans, or groups like Chapparbands or Jogis. 

They are defined as people with criminal, extortionate practices, or, with demonic tendencies, as swindlers, manufacturers of spurious coins, or as dealers in base metal. Indiscriminate slaughter of game by Bhils, railway thefts by Bhampas, burglary by Doms, robberies by Minas, theft by Kalandars or Rahwaris, pugnacious nature of the Gosains have been mentioned with a barely hidden distaste, and robbery has been described as a congenital part of the religion of some groups, without comprehending the various ways, in which their lifestyles have been disturbed by alien intrusions, and without understanding that the victims of destruction should not be blamed as agents of such destruction. 

The marriage rules, ceremonial pollution practices, origin myths, legends, festivals, ways of worship, deities, self management methods, sexual habits of the nomads are described in this volume. The account is interspersed with valuable discussions of the languages, literature, folk tales and songs of groups like the Bhats, Kanjars, Kodas or Todas, or, of the subsistence technologies, including shifting cultivation of the Baigas, hunting gathering of the Bhils, cow herding of the Gaddis. The folk deities and self governing tribal councils of various groups, including those of the Bagdis, have been listed. Valuable information has been given on the so called demonology of Kanjars, and material has been reproduced on the mythology of Singbonga or sun worship among the Mundas. However, this discussion was not pursued, as decision had been taken to leave these groups to their own ways, rather than to learn or learn from their language. There is, instead, a concentration in the description on human sacrifices, witchcraft, female promiscuity, premarital license, grotesque appearance, drunken revels of various groups like Banjaras, Barwas, Bhils, Budukalas, Madaris, Oraons. There is little attempt to comprehend the wisdom, method or relevance of the location specific nature of the skills and technologies, or, to understand the religion, the philosophy, or the ritual, supporting these folk cults. As a result, the nomadic groups have been presented as a faceless amorphous mass, characterised by animistic or fetishistic practices, who do not have an intimation of the best and finest in human thought or intellection. 

The nomads have, therefore, in this view, become people who are in the need of law, mission, civilisatrice. The view is permeated by a theory of control over people, who require, even beseech domination. The implicit suggestion of a redemptive mission, to protect the Indian territory from tribalism, dissension, mutual violence, is based on the universalising discourse of Europe and its self assumed telos to civilise the non European world, without its consent. In this way, the production, circulation or history of representation of nomadic cultures has become entangled with power mongering and empire building. The community habitats of the nomads have been seen as the outlying possession of the European world for appropriation as its own other. The absence of individual titular rights of the nomads and their herds on their camp sites in their zone of movement, has beem held against them, on an alien jurisprudential premise of Terra Nullius, to dislodge them from their camp sites, and to appropriate and mine their bio cultural landscapes, in the interest of the empire. 

The contemptuous attitude to Indian nomads, implicit in these accounts, reflects similar attitudes, adapted towards the nomads all over the world.(Jean Paul Clerbert, The Gypsies, 1963; W.R.Rishi, Ed. Roma, 1974 till date) They have been variously called Gypsies, Gypos, Bohemians, Egyptians or Rabouin (messengers of the devil); accused of causing natural scourges and epidemics; treated by Government as Pariahs, as a pest and a plague; as filthy rogues with incomprehensible language and manner; as non human, void of normal human rights; exposed to the slave market; subjected to military or tax obligations, and excluded from the pale of civilised society. 

The Gypsies are seen as the descendants of Cain (blacksmith in Semitic languages), brother of Abel, who is cursed in the Genesis text, "when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength: a fugitive, a vagabond shalt thou be on the earth". 

In the Tempest, Caliban (Kaliben is a Gypsy word meaning blackness) is a tortured spirit.The persecution mania is evident in the prophesy of Ezekiel, "I shall scatter the Egyptians around the nations". It is evident in the mythology, linking the ironsmith with enemies of Gods, as giants digging the bowels of the earth and taming the central holocaust, as Prometheus tamed the fire. The nomadic diaspora has been comparable to the Jewish diaspora, and hundreds of thousands of Gypsies have been liquidated by the Nazis in their concentration camps in the same way as the Jews were. The reason for such persistent and relentless persecution of the nomads is the reductive stereotypes established the world over about their dupery,their practice of diabolical witchcraft, their lascivious habits and their criminal tendencies.Suspicion about them has been associated with the growing sedentary nature of human civilisation, in which virtue has come to be identified with fixed habits, habitations or employments. The nomadic habit of vagabondage, of wandering about without a recognised domicile or ccupation, has been considered an offence. No wonder that such sustained persecution should drive the nomads to the deviant behaviour they have been accused of. 

The blanket terms, originally used to describe nomads like Baluchis, Yoruks (wanderers in Turkish), Amorites, Scythians, Cimmerians, Sarmatians have now come to apply later to ethnic communities. 

Nomadic pastoralism has been demonstrated to contain an ambivalence and continuum between sedentarisation and nomadisation; between hunting gathering, centred around seasonal base camps in defined territories, equipped with water resources, ceremonial, kill and hunting sites on the one hand, and wide spread migration patterns, dependent on mobile pastoral capital and variable seasonal pastoral availability on the other. In India, Bhotias, Gujjars and Gaddis variously combine cattle rearing with mercantile and farming activities. The insistence on the rehabilitation of nomadic and denotified tribes, under one common category, so that they may stay at one place, build houses and live as good citizens of communities, show the continuing fixations and prejudices against the nomads and the refusal to understand the value of their traditions.The researcher may be able to acquire an understanding of the Nomads only when he transcends the reductive homogenising categories for nomads, and looks at the variety of nomadic approaches to resource management and survival in different ecosystems. He has to go beyond established prototypes about the linguistic correlations of nomadic names like Luri and Nuri, Dom and the Lom, Zotts and Jats in India and the Middle East, Manush in France and in India; the similarity of technologies and professions; the unity of roots of the basic tongue; the uniformity of the secret sign language Patrin, communicated through patterns, drawn on walls or tree branches; the common characterisation of the non nomadic groups by nomads as Gadjo or clod hopping peasants. The researcher has to also go beyond the romantic myth about the child of Bohemia, about his majestic freedom, wanderjahre and unaffected beauty; and, beyond the image of the nomads as people with loose clothes, dishevelled hair, long ears. He has to recollect and recapitulate their skills in 

horse rearing and dealing, in metal smithy, fishing, and embroidery; their broad trophic base, including berries,mushrooms, roots,wild fruits, vegetables, molasses and small mammals; their music and dance, like Flamenco or Chochek, accompanied by musical instruments like tambourines, drums, citharas, lutes, cymbals, pipes and violins, and by varieties of jumps, leaps, squats, and cart wheels. He has to investigate their predictions and divinations about the terrain and environment; their subsistence and resource management technologies; their pharmacopoeia, using plants, magic and music; the shape and meaning of motifs like snakes and stars, sun and moon,inscribed by them on amulets and talismans, batons and sceptres, on coats, boots, spurs,or tattooed on bodies. He has to reconstruct the significance of their multiple use of the caravan as a dwelling, workshop and transport; their round, barrel vaulted, bower like tents and shrines,varying with seasonal changes.Finally, he has to step back and recollect their oral knowledge, folklore, religion and philosophy, preserved in dialects. Valuable lessons of socialisation, marketing strategies and community living can be learnt from the way the Bhotia settlements were managed in the seven river valleys of Uttarakhand, on the strength of institutions like the youth dormitories, called Rangh-Bang, the Ranths or lineages, and linked across mountain passes with Tibetan Mandis or market places. The variety of castes, underlying the occupational nomenclature of the Gaddis, the various religious denominations and survival strategies, comprehended by the term Gujjar, cannot be ignored in applying uniform identity markers to these groups. 

During most of their time on this earth, the ancestors of the contemporary human being have moved as nomadic foragers and hunters, frequenting deserts, mountains, jungles or arctic waste lands, representing climatic and environmental extremes. The life enhancing strategies, evolved by them in course of such movements, the self imposed limitation on their property and material technology, the informality of their socio-political organisation, the ceremonies related to their life cycles, remain sources of valuable information for alternative life ways. The earliest tool makers in Pleistocene cultures were hunter gatherers, who created a rich body of rock and cave art and art mobilier. The memory of the prehistoric environment still survives in the nomadic ways of labour division, product distribution, authority structures. It survives in the inborn migration patterns of the symbiotic communities of men and herds, released by the movement of their internal biological clock, through annual cycles, induced by fluctuations in hormone balance, temperature and day light. 

According to the l3th century Arab thinker Ibne Khaldun, author of the Muqaddimah, the migratory drift, resulting from or culminating in territorial aggrandisement, was mostly inter woven with the dynastic cycle of civilisations. This is evident in the ways, in which the various nomadic tribes in India link their fortunes historicallyor mythologically with the vicissitudes in the fortune of political rulers and kingdoms, specially in Central and Western India. The Gadulia or Gade Lohar or blacksmiths using big and small bullock carts, called wan and tango, are supposed to have taken a pledge, after fighting shoulder to shoulder with Rana Pratap of Chittor, not to lead a settled life, sleep on a cot, draw water from wells, to use lamps or to visit the Chittorgarh fort. While this may or may not be borne out by historical facts, the conviction establishes the validity of Ibne Khaldun's statement. In recent history, the Tibetan migratory movements have been caused by Chinese occupation of Tibet and subsequent assaults on practice of religion, on hair styles, or on taboo against animal slaughter by Tibetan women. The memory of these compulsive movements, reflected in nomadic material culture, offers clues to the cognitive beginnings of the human language before the invention of the script. The nomadic oral traditions regulating pasture allocation, migration routes and herd rights provide a corpus of unwritten law. 

The nomadic tradition is a source of the oral history of the people of the earth, recorded in delicate patterns, inscribed on stones, textiles, masks, Buddhist temples, across the near East and Central Asia, in the mountain arc of Taurus-Zagros, from the Atlas mountain to the Altai. Most of the motifs in the vocabulary of early Indian art came out of the shared corpus of the nomadic cultures of Central and Western Asia. Motifs like mythical monsters, griffin, triton, centaur, palmette, honeysuckle, bead and reel, lotus and bell, fret and spiral, volute and swastika, rosette and petal, tree and mountain, bells and flags, umbrellas and banners have travelled through ceramic and textile designs in nomadic migrations of balladeers, reciters, picture showmen, rope walkers. These motifs reduce anthromorphic, zomorphic, theriomorphic forms to essential geometric patterns, and speak of a life dominated by the abstractions of nature. 

Rugged and bleak terrains, littered with stone slabs, marking graves of brave men; goat skin, goat hair or felt tents, tapestries and rugs, providing shelter and sustenance in chill, or gusty winds, steep slopes and high passages of mountains, steppes and deserts; house boats with drying garments, and fishing nets; elaborate, multi coloured head dresses with costume jewellery, sequin adorned sparkling dresses; community meals, shared from the same plate, community dances and ritual combats; salt, gathered in pot holes, transported on camel back to barter it for food, cloth and household utensils; skin water bags, water proofed by reddish brown acacia bark solution; leather covered calabash, resonating to a taut bow, drawn across a horse hair string; dark glistening bodies in waters, or bodies, weaving around in a circle; flaring beards, carefully nurtured whiskers; garish, colourful, massed anklets, bangles, and ornaments, made of cowrie shells, metal beads, and polished brass spools, these are the scenes one comes across among the nomads of the earth. 

The nomadic camps being located in upland valleys, and on alluvial deposits below abrupt slopes in high energy, geomorphic environments in the Near east, have been subject to degradation, disturbance and concealment by hill wash, which may have protected such sites in high mountain pastures and steppes and should be looked for. The tents, leather vessels and baskets, the fragile camp sites, located in inclement territories and weathers, have accounted for the dearth of material specimens of nomadic culture. Microstratigraphy has revealed pottery sherds, bread oven pits, grind stones and slabs, ceramic churns and grinders,hearths, bathing platforms, levelled floors, stone corrals, composite dwellings, from abandoned summer camp sites of nomads , Afghanistan, Iran,Turkey, Persia. The Mughal army camps, the ruins of towns like Persepolis, and several Roman towns, imitate tent settlements, and tents have actually been used on the ruins of Sassanian palaces and ruined Caravanserais of Seljuk period (Rogers Cribb, Nomads in Archaeology, 1991: pp.77, 81, 84, 112,149-151). 

Fr Rosso's work has to be placed in the backdrop of this rich nomadic heritage and the history of its neglect. He has been visiting the various nomadic communities of the world as part of his obligation to carry on the mission of the prototypical shepherd of folks, the Prophet Christ. He has been catering to the education of the shepherd people and their children in different parts of the world. He has captured the rhythm of their life and the changes in their expression at different times of the day, in moments of gravity, anxiety, wonderment, amusement, fun, shy withdrawal, sardonic amusement, eager curiosity, in portraits of unusual quality. He has recorded their cooking and food habits, the polychromy of their dress and accoutrements, the robust ethical profiles of their families, in intimate and convivial groups and feasts. He has seen the gnarled, corrugated, creased faces of the old and the pensive and playful moods of children, images of loveliness and innocence. He has built up a gallery of images of a proud, self respecting, unanxious folk, with great love of ornament and beauty, with a straight and unabashed gaze, and a deep sense of communion for animals, who give them their food and 

livelihood. 

The photographs show Fr. Rosso living with the nomads, assuming their attire and identifying himself in many ways with the people he is trying to serve. It is this empathy which redeems his record from being a mute study of the other and brings it close to the smell of the earth, trodden by the nomadic people,and sanctifies it with the dust of their hearth, and their work stations. The Rabaris, Gadulia Lohars, Kalbelias have come alive in images of responsive smiles and gratitude. The Bhopa paintings have been shown in colourful processional paintings of kings and soldiers, horses and elephants. 

Fr Rosso's efforts and the present compilation of colonial chronicles about Indian nomads assume special significance in the light of the recent resurgence of sentiments of global fellowship among the nomadic communities of the world. This resurgence has been demonstrated variously in the development of the Romano Ekipe, the World Romani Union, which has been holding International congresses and festivals since l971; by the creation of the Kris Romani or the International Romanic Court of Elders, to mete out justice within Romanic Codes of law; by the activities of learned bodies like the Indian Institute of Romanic Studies, headed by Dr W R Rishi, who had the distinction of heading the World Romani Union as its honorary President; by the accumulation of scholarly work to investigate the roots of the nomadic folk tale, music, language and the elements shared by the Romas the world over with the surviving remnants of their culture in North Western India in the Baro Than. The resurgence of self awareness has been amply evident in the courage and persistence with which the Romas have engaged in lobbying, advocacy and fighting for their basic rights under the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights. Romas have not only been investigating the legal status of their brethren in every country and fighting racial discrimination, but they have also been dealing with the issue of reparation for the war crimes and the genocide, perpetrated against the nomads in course of Porrajmos or the Holocaust, during and before the second World War. Finally, the courage of the Romas has been demonstrated in exploding the myth of their being sub human, untermenschen, whose lives are not worthy of life. They have done this by creating , reliving and recapitulating music and poetry , vibrant with poignant emotions and full of an incredible beauty of fellow feeling for other elements of nature and universe, and, by giving birth to outstanding linguists, scientists and creative artists of world renown like Yul Brynner or Musicians like Reshma, whose heart rending songs (Hai O Rabba naiyon Lagda dil mera: I am crying O Lord! My heart is not at rest at all !), are laden with the pent up tears and sorrows of nomadic life, carried across centuries of desolate, timeless terrains. 

The Roma example and the present account demonstrate the need to draw the surviving remnants of the itinerant communities of India into a larger nomadic brotherhood, to break down prejudices, transmitted through such accounts, and to simultaneously follow up the valuable clues to nomadic identities, gathered by meticulous research in these accounts, for infusing the energy and creativity of nomadic ways into sedentary civilisations. It will be a sad day when the human being will forget his nomadic past and reduce himself to a completely settled life, frozen in fixed moulds. The contemporary prefabricated portable structures, transient urban townships and public works, synthesised fusion music, metonomic beats, on off bombardment of electronic signals, sensationalist arts, gory with sex and violence, the incessant breakdown of social, political and economic institutions, speak of the fragility, instability and uncertainty of contemporary living, minus the nomadic sense of family and institu tional ethic, of simple but not unbeautiful living.The nomads should be recognised as the ecosphere communities living in communion with different ecosystems. 

They could still provide the ideological dyke against the invasion of the biosphere people, who have been switching from one ecosystem to another, exploiting and exhausting them, and, who have been steering globalisation, homogenisation and technification, that are engulfing the fragile ecosystems of the earth, like a deluge. 

The same might have happened in the Hindu Valley Civilisation, probably at the same time or later.) 

Slowly, settled life, either in spontaneous forms or through conquest, extended to all the known world. 

Nevertheless some fringe groups remained attached to the nomadic way of life and maintained a sort of bridge or communication network between the groups that had by then become settled and no longer traveled along the old routes. 

Those whom nowadays we call Gypsies might be the descendants of those groups. Even at the present time they have not be come settled. 

I say they "might be", since the discourse on them is quite complex. On the one hand, these groups may have tried to preserve intact their way of life, and yet in order to survive they have had to accept into their own clans the integration and incorporation of foreign ethnic elements. Those coming from the outside tended to fully endorse the prevailing spirit of the group, but at the same time introduced new elements into the culture.

This process has been tak ing place across millennia, producing changes in the size and shape of their physique, in the colour of their skin and, moreover, in the perceptions of the Gypsy soul.

For all these reasons we can underline the fact that our recorded history, of which we so often speak and are proud (or frequently ashamed of), encompasses a period of time that does not extend back beyond ten thousand years. Whereas pre-history, which has seen all the efforts of humans to come out from the forest and begin the process of their integral humanisation, belongs to Nomads and is millions of years long.

Occasionally the Nomads, drawn or repelled by the most disparate phenomena, adapted their way of life to climates and environmental conditions which were not merely difficult, but virtually uninhabitable. They did not succumb either to 70 degrees below zero during the glacial era, or 70 degrees above zero in the deserts. 

They were permanently looking for the most suitable environments to live in. Running away from major dangers, they managed to reach all the continents. 

They were scattered across theglobe without becoming extinct. 

The Nomads were the first to experience encounters with God and therefore to grow different forms of faith sustained by some sort of religious structures. They organized tight family groups and the first social structures. Across millennia they have made discoveries on which civilisation as we know it has laid its foundations. 

The Nomad's civilisation is the greatest of all, the one which has made all the others possible. 

Having learned to smile and to cry, they learned to play games. Slowly the games became more complex and difficult, and in what we call our civilisation they were turned into wars and hard work. In the last millennia the game has turned into a struggle for power and glory. The players have become workers. The winners were anointed as emperors and the defeated were enslaved. Never theless, along this path of complex and fragmented history some fringes of humanity have remained Nomads, always interacting with other cultures, but choosing freedom for them selves even at the terrible expense of 

alienation. When Europeans or Americans say that Gypsies come from India, they often think of India as just a point on the Asian continent, but if we go to India we immediately realise that the Indian Nation is not just a point but a continent in itselfÑ the Indian Sub-continent. 

Its human and social realities are extremely eterogeneous and complex. Meeting the Nomads of India we ask: "Do they belong to this nation of peoples or do they come from other countries?" 

I would like to spend some more time considering whether or not it is acceptable to speak of Indian Gypsies. Regarding the use of the epithet Gypsies, it can be said that when the British came to India they met some Nomads who were very similar to those they knew by the name of Gypsies back in Europe, and therefore called them Gypsies. They did this even before realising the deep connection between the Indian and European Nomads. 

The name has become a common noun associated with the proper names of the different regions in which they are found. So, in Europe we often say Italian Gypsies, Spanish, Polish, French, Russian etc. We also call them by their proper names: Rom, Sinti, Kal‹o, etc. In India we often speak of Indian Gypsies and then specify their divisional names such as Lambadis, Gadia Lohar, Koravas, Rabaris, Baydda etc. 

Therefore to use the word Gypsy is not only acceptable but also very precise, since it is the word that, nowadays, represents faithfully the Nomadic groups. Nevertheless Gypsy is not synonymous with Nomad. 

For instance, in my opinion, the name Gypsy should not be applied to the Nomads living in isolation in a Himalayan forest and without any relationship with settled groups. They should be called a nomadic tribe. For example, the Eskimos, due to their past isolation were never called Gypsies. Proper anthropological and philological literature has extended the name Gypsy to a variety of groups (which will be considered later), resorting to an analogy of the Euro pean and American groups, as well as seeing some real connections between them.

Allowing the use of a metaphor, it can be said that Gypsies are bridges between different settled societies, whereas Nomadic tribes might just be isolated pillars without the connecting arches. Such arches might have fallen or they might have never existed, at least in recent history. Nevertheless, if we care about bridges, we should also pay attention 

to "isolated pillars" since they could still surprise us by revealing interesting connections which existed in the distant past. 

To someone asking: "Do the European gypsies come from India? From which particular group do they come?" I can only answer that, if nowadays on the Indian Sub-continent we can list about 400 groups and sub-groups of Nomads, we can deduce that 500 years earlier, there were probably only 100 groups, only 50 a thousand years earlier, and even less 2000 years ago. All throughout history the groups differentiated, fragmented and multiplied. 

The conglomerate of all these groups, not of one specific group, may be considered the ances-tors of those groups that migrated to Europe first and then to America. 

If research into the different groups is to be legitmate and accountable in establishing new connections to enrich their history, it needs to make use of all the elements available. This means including the languages of settled groups and the way of life of Nomads not strictly considered Gypsies. 

In recent years, there has been a strong emphasis on the fact that the Panjabi language is very close to the European language of the Gypsies.  

I tend to think that Gujarati is more similar to it than Panjabi. 

Anyway, both languages belong to settled groups, whereas if we enter a Nomadic camp of the Lambadis, Koravas or Baydda, we find a sort of language that in the last few centuries has grown far apart from them both, but in the demeanor of these Nomads we find burning the fire and flair of their Gypsy soul. 

When I use the term ÔpeopleÕs soulÕ I am not using it in the philosophical or theological sense, but I refer to the natural soul of humans, through whose instincts, feelings, reflection, trust, hope, aggression, altruism, egoism and cooperation, has made it possible for humanity to grow, mature, decay and then evolve again. This soul varies from person to person and from people to people. This is the soul I refer to when I speak of a Nomad or Gypsy soul. It is a soul that is not considered simply in racial, historical or linguistic terms alone, but embraces and overwhelms all these dimensions. It is the soul of Gypsy People - it cannot be described, but only experienced when the Gypsies offer it to you. 

Most significant steps in Nomadic history

In the mean time, this Hominid was becoming Erectus. Though in Africa he was coming of age, he soon started to move towards Europe and Asia. He reached the southern Himalayas, and moved across the north of India on his way to the northern regions of China.

At the Longuppo site, near the Yangtze lake and not far from Beijing, two premolars of about two million years of age were found. Then, the Erectus descended into the Indonesian Islands. There, some human remains were discovered under the rubbles of a volcanic eruption that took place about 1.7 million years ago on Jawa Island. On his way back to Africa, he left some tell-tale signs dated around 1.5 million years ago in Israel at Ubeidiya, as well as a twelve year old son in Kenya, near the Turkana Lake. In the same period, those who had stayed in Asia were spending a long time in areas south of Beijing.

Their one million year old remains were found at Chen-Cha-Wo and Nihewan. Younger remains from 600 thousand years ago were discovered at Yunxian. The Homo Erectus reached Beijing 400 thousand years ago. Those groups who had travelled to Europe had arrived in the area of Budapest 200 thousand years earlier.

The first footprints of a Homo Sapiens of 300 to 250 thousand years ago who had a brain similar to ours, and a hundred cubic centimetres larger than the brain of the Homo of Beijing were discovered in France at Swanscombe and Montmaurin. A primitive type of Neanderthal 150 thousand years old has left archaeological evidence near Weimar in Germany and near Rome in Italy.     

From 80 to 35 thousand years ago humans started to come of age with a brain size between 1350 and 1700 cubic centimetres. The classic Neanderthal was by now ready to set out on the longest ever journey in the history of humans: after a long glacial era the planet was once again becoming warmer and humans had started the reconquest of its lost northern plains, and in a short while all the spaces of the planet were recovered. Many scholars tend to agree that those travelling humans had already reached Australia 50 thousand years ago.

Between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago the Neanderthal man started to assume the physical forms of a modern human: the Homo Sapiens. Skeletons surrounded by some precious archaeological items, discovered mainly in Western Europe, give evidence about a real Nomad Sapiens who was a good hunter and fisherman able to use implements made of bones and teeth of bears and lions. Even though he did not use yet bows and arrows for hunting, he knew how to use a harpoon. He did not cook food yet, but he knew how to sew and fasten leather with some sort of rudimental buttons. He did not have domestic animals, not even a dog, which was tamed later. He was still a primitive hunter who did not domesticate animals or use sophisticated weapons, but he knew how to hold a flute in his hands and play music to celebrate life: he had really become an adult human being. 

It is worthy of mention the fact that the Homo Erectus had survived till that time and, probably, having lived together with the Homo Sapiens for some time, he was assimilated by the latter. The Homo Erectus, after having travelled for more than two million years, left his last fossil trace 35 thousand years ago. He disappeared, leaving the Homo Sapiens as the only survivor of human prehistory.  

Thirty thousand years ago, a significant turn in the life of Nomads took place. Until that time they had been moving around on vast open spaces which had made hunting, fishing and fruit gathering quite easy, even though their way to do that was very rudimental and primitive. But by now glaciation was taking place. Large parts of the globe were being covered by ice. The Nomads had to migrate from the north to the south of the planet. They had to leave the mountains, a natural refuge from wild beasts, to occupy valleys and plains which were warmer. But the wild animals like rhinos, elephants, reindeer, aurax, nasicoxir and bears did the same. Life was becoming more difficult for everyone and humans had to face these wild beasts. Although earlier humans were unable to kill such animals, and would instead run away from them or move to the protected heights of mountains, this was no longer possible.

Humans had to unite in groups to overcome the power of the wild animals. Soon they discovered that as a group they were stronger and even took chances to attack other human groups occupying the best locations. It was probably at this time that Nomads started to organise themselves in social groups and clans. Necessity made them use their intelligence, which was not lacking, since they had a brain size of 1700 cubic centimetres. They invented new ways of hunting and fishing, using traps, hooks and lines. Therefore they were soon able to hunt larger animals. Through hunting and fishing they had enough to subsist; they had food, clothes, shelter, tools and implements for hunting and fishing which were made out of leather, bones, horns and teeth. Everything was becoming useful for intelligent humans. They did not even deprive themselves of the luxury of art. They applied an aesthetic view to the making of tools and to the paintings on stone walls depicting their daily life. The history of 30 thousand years of nomadic life is recorded on stone and cave walls paintings in Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa. 

Around ten thousand years ago the Nomadic way of life faced a new development: the beginning of a settled way of life. The ability to stock dry seeds and fruits for the whole year and primitive forms of cultivation were beginning to divide the human community: on the one side there were those who settled down and on the other those who continued to be Nomads. Very soon the Nomadic world would undergo a further division. On one side were those who carried on living as Nomads but in isolation in forests and deserts without any sort of relationship to settled groups. On the other side, there were those who lived alongside other semi-nomadic or settled groups, building bridges across the different groups and cultures, and enabling the exchange of cultural, artistic and economic goods. Moreover they were creating a real and specific culture that cautiously I dare to call a Gypsy Culture (though the word Gypsy will only appear much later), which still survives in the Gypsy camps in the different countries of the world. 

Agriculture is responsible for this great revolution in the Nomads way of life. The first archaeological evidence of cultivation of crops like beans, peas and cucumbers is dated at around 9500 BC. in Thailand. A portion of such crops were dried and stocked for the whole year. Nevertheless this ancient form of cultivation does not show any connection with the one which came about later and which was a real agricultural culture as a consequence of the semi-settled or settled groups of humans. Some carved stones, dated around 5.000 years B.C., were probably used as agricultural implements. Around the years 5,000 to 4,000 B.C., the culture of farming shows up in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Iran and India. In Mexico an independent development of the same agricultural crops was taking place. The primitive forms of agriculture were very different. For instance, think how different would be the type of agriculture among semi-nomadic people from our own forms of farming. Basically, there were three types of farming. The first type consisted of carrying around between the different forests (which were the natural environments of clans on the move) vegetable seeds and saplings of palm or any other tree which would produce a known, useful and consumable type of fruit. A second type of farming was much more sophisticated. It required the burning of woodlands in order to plant seed in the fertile ashes. This type of agriculture relied on abundant rainfall and did not require particular implements or metal tools. The third type of agriculture would only come about later, with the ability of humans to make proper tools for sowing and planting, compounded with the ability to harness the labour force of domesticated animals. 

After the early changes due to the appearance of settled ways of life and farming, Nomadism took a new turn when humans learnt to domesticate and breed animals. Also in this case, pastoral nomadism seems to coalesce into two distinct branches: semi-pastoral groups connected with the farming communities; and pastoral Nomads. 

The primitive communities, after having developed the first forms of agriculture, discovered that the domestication of some wild animals could offer them significant advantages: they could both harness them as supplementary labour on the land and obtain from them milk and, in few cases, meat as a source of food. The first archaeological evidence of domestication of animals goes back between 8.000 to 6.500 years ago in Palestine and the Middle East. The first animals to be domesticated, with the due exception of dogs which had already become friendly with humans in Siberia, were sheep, goats, pigs and fowls. It is only later in Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, South Europe and Tibet that cattle, asses, camels and yaks were domesticated. In connection to this, the first semipastoral communities were established: they would go around with herds every year for a certain period of time and then come back to the village to farm. In some case, part of the family would stay back at home, while the young males were those going out to face the hardship of pastoral life.

Pastoral nomadism developed within farming communities which  had become semi-nomadic. Developing alongside this was a kind of pastoral nomadism in communities that had never become settled, dependent on land farming, or attached to the house with a sense of home. After the domestication of animals, the earlier Nomads who were hunters, fishermen and gatherers started to incorporate within their camps and migratory journeys a more or less large herd of domestic animals. Archaeological research is not conclusive in producing evidence referring respectively to the two different pastoral groups. Nevertheless some evidence of a nomadic pastoral group that was never involved in farming, never settled down in one place, and had its own specific culture, was found in Inner Asia in the area of Minussinsk-Altai. In the year 2000 BC. these Nomads already possessed cattle, sheep and horses. Later than this, it can be seen that tribal hunters of Mongolia, Kazaksthan and Siberia also started to assume a pastoral culture which radically changed their economy and way of life. At the same time in West Asia the Kassites, Hittites and Mitannis tribes, around the years 1.900 to 1.700 BC., were harnessing horses to carts for work and war. The use of horses in war expanded quickly to Europe, North Africa, Central Asia and East Asia.

It is also worth mentioning the fact that around 1.500 B.C., with the domestication of camels in Arabia, another form of pastoral culture was beginning to develop: the Bedouin culture that survives well into the present days. From Arabia the Bedouin culture, under different names, moved West towards North Africa in the Sahara desert and Ethiopia, and moved East well into Iran. Along with camels they also started to breed other animals like sheep and goats which would provide them with wool, leather, milk and meat. With the use of camels the Bedouin soon became transporters of goods and protectors of small caravans. This practice spread to Pakistan, Afghanistan and West India, where it survives until the present.

The Languages and a comparative view of them 

While Nomads in their perennial travelling can be said to have discovered the communication of words, enriched their own linguistic knowledge and made words goods of cultural exchange,  it was mainly due to the settled groups that such tools of communication were given a written form, which has enabled the reproduction and survival of old languages.  Languages, in their either natural development or forcibly structured form, are an invaluable historical device by which we can discover links and connections between human groups which on the surface and for geographical reasons seem to be far apart.   In this brief chapter, I will present an excursus on how written script has become a valuable document for our research.

The oldest written tablets, dated around the year 3,300 B.C., were unearthed at Jammed Nasal in the bed of the river Tigris in Mesopotamia.  The inscriptions on these tablets are in a phonetic sort of script that would later develop into a richer form of syllabic and alphabetic script.  Prior to this date there had been some other  forms of written communication.  Primitive humans would  represent hunting events, battles, and scenes of family life by painting them on stone walls and caves, using stylised designs and signs which were of immediate understanding, but which restricted the complexity of the material that could be communicated.

Tablets written in the cuneiform script are already the result of a more or less long historical process of evolution along lines of logic and rational thinking.  This process is still unknown to us.  For the time being, with the little evidence we have, we suppose that the people bringing about this evolution were the Sumerians.  Babylonian cuneiform script had a great span of development from the year 3,000 B.C.  Moreover it was adopted with few variants by other groups: by the Elamites-- and by the Assirians of Semitic stock.  Quite later, around the year 1,900 B.C., it was also adopted by the Indo-European Hittites, Mitannis and Persians. 

The fact that Babylon was an important and dominant trade centre seems to have compelled other groups of people to adopt that script, at least for economic reasons.

Evidence from the Hindu Valley Civilisation provides us with a key to unlock links and trade relations between West and East which, by that time (some time after 1.900 BC), were already well established.  Also, archaeological evidence from Ur--present day Baghdad-- in Mesopotamia points to established trade link with the Hindu Valley cities, probably Mohenjo Daro.  The evidence is constituted by some terracotta tablet seals on which a form of pictographic script was used to represent animals, which though still unknown in Mesopotamia, was very common in India.  Another set of documents, dated around 1,400 B.C., presents us with further evidence about the evolution of script, languages, and the relations between East and West.  At Boghazkeui in Turkey 10,000 tablets were discovered.  They are inscribed with a cuneiform script and reproduce words of Indo-European origin.  They seem to be a ritual text written in three different languages: Luili; Hattic; and Hurrian-Hrozny.  

It is in the set of the Hurrian-Hrozny language that the names of three important Indian-Vedic divinities are found, namely: Varuna, Indra and Nasatya.  Note also that in Syria some more tablets with the same type of script were found.  But let me now go back in time once again, in order to complete the historical picture of the earlier stages of scripts.

Contemporaneously to the Babylonian developments or probably stimulated by the news of a system for writing in Babylon, the Egyptians and Sumerians started to develop their own system called 'hieroglyphics' and based on 400 signs divided into three categories of representation:

-pictograms to represent visible and concrete things;

-ideograms to express concepts and ideas;

-phonograms to signify sounds.   

In schools for common people the Demotic system, used mainly by traders, warriors and artists, was taught.  In these schools also the Babylonian Cuneiform system was learnt since it was useful for commercial and political relations.  In the schools of the sacerdotal class the Hieratic system, an italic form of hieroglyphics but much more elaborate, was used.      

On the other side of the globe, in China, around the years 2,000 -1,500 B.C., a system of writing was taking shape as well.  The influence of the earlier Babylonian invention might probably have been very important for the development of the Chinese language as well, nevertheless, like the Egyptian script it was developed as an independent system.  The Chinese script was a composition of ideograms and phonograms and even after a long time of development it maintained itself very closely to the original matrix.      

The alphabetic script of the Phoenicians, a Semitic group, begins to appear between 1,800 and 1,500 B.C. in Asia Minor.  The Phoenicians were not very original in formulating a script, but they took a lucky turn in the  evolution of languages.  They borrowed 27 syllabic cuneiform characters from the Babylonian script and added three vowels: A; I; U.  Writing was becoming much simpler, but much more able to convey meanings.  Along the birth of this system of writing some significant texts came into existence: the Proto-Sinaitic biblical texts.  About the same period (1,800 to 1,500 B.C.) the formation of the languages of both the Northern Semitic groups (Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Aramaics) and the Southern Semitic groups of Sub-Arabia, was taking place.  In the West the final evolutionary stage of script formation, which was the completion of a system based on five vowels, was completed around the year 800 B.C.  This last stage is mainly due to the Greek and Roman people who managed to organise a simpler form of graphic script.   

In the East, in India, the most ancient form of written language was probably the one used by the people of the Hindu Valley Civilisation, but until now due to the scant archaeological evidence available, no one has managed to decipher the scrip.  The script of modern Indian languages seems to have derived from an ancient type of Indo-European language called Proto-Vedic-Aryan, based on a script called Ideographic cum Syllabic.  This type of writing probably did not appear on the Indian Sub-Continent before the arrival of the Aryans between 1,500 and 1,000 B.C. 

The above  brief historical excursus has given us a taste of the early links and connections between peoples living in Africa, Asia and Europe between the years of 3,000 and 1,000 BC.  I did this considering primarily the history of script formation, since it is backed up by very scientific documentation.  Of course, it would be very interesting to do the same regarding language formation, which would take us into a distant time and into a fascinating world, but as it was said by Latin peoples: "Verba volant, scripta manent", that is:  "words fly but scripts stay".  Moreover, a study of language formation requires us to tackle philology, archaeology, history, anthropology, geography and other sciences in a sort of inter-disciplinary approach. Focusing on our primary interests on the world of Nomads, but not in an exclusive way,  I will introduce a variety of elements that can be developed further according to everyone's interest.      

Without doubt, one of the most important element that we need to look at in order to deal with groups of Nomads is language.  The historical picture of the last millennium points to the fact that the  Gypsy language which has remained most faithful to its Indo- Sanskrit roots is that of the Euro-American Gypsies.  Moving West, they took along with them the local language of Western India, a language they did know quite well.  Entering new countries which had completely different languages, they preserved their original idioms which provided them with a sort of separate identity and protected them from the other groups.

While on the move, they never felt the need to carry along in their language the set of different dialects which they might have used while back in India in order to maintain and protect their relations within the group.  Those idioms were no longer necessary.  On the other hand, the Gypsies who stayed in India were moving around within an area where Hindi or languages all very similar to Sanskrit were spoken and well-known by everyone.  Therefore, they adopted forms of dialects or artificial languages which in such a context would make it easy for them to preserve their own separate identity and defend themselves from the settled groups.

This is the most likely reason behind the fact that the language of the Euro-American Gypsy is a lot more similar to Gujirati, Rajastani, Panjabi and Hindi than the languages used privately by the Indian Gypsy.  This fact could well take us towards a sort of wrong argument: someone could argue that the Gypsy people are part of, or originated from, those settled groups in Gujirat, Rajastan and Panjab, since they have a similar language.  Whereas our earlier linguistic argument compounded with anthropological, historical and geographical evidence seems to sustain the following conclusion:  Gypsy people of East and West belong to and originated fromthat great and varied group of Nomad-Gypsy still living in India .

To stimulate an open deeper academic research, we have done some sort of background work. We have selected, out of 823 languages, a reduced but sufficient number of linguistic groups and families which are related to the Euro-American Gypsy language.  Some further research work can be done on the links and relations between Indian Gypsy idioms, dialects and languages with Indian local, classic and ancient languages.       

For a first selection of languages I depend upon the Linguistic Survey of India.  For the translations, collection of words, and the general organaization of linguistic material, we are indebted to G.A. Grierson.  For the collection of words, samples, and earlier works on specific languages, we are indebted to the following researchers:  Md. Abdul Gafurs, G.W. Leitner, Sir R.C. Temple, Rev. T. Grahame Bailey, M. Kennedy, E. Balfour, W. Kirkpatrik, A. Cabaton, C. O. Blagden, B.H. Hodgson and many others.

To deal with the phonetic problem we have basically followed the choices made by previous researchers of the Linguistic Survey of India.

A special computer font and program was written by Carlo Rubini to deal with the graphic representation of phonetic signs.

Riccardo Tobanelli introduced some more changes regarding the use of computer technology, and designed the graphic representation of the different languages to allow an immediate comparison and comprehension of the languages.

He and Aira Vehaskari were also involved in the revision of the final draft.  Moreover, Riccardo was there with me at every single step and turn, when we had to make choices shifting through a huge amount of material.      

List of Groups

-The first group of languages covered in this presentation for a comparative study with the European Gypsy language, and offered for research, is the group of 'Ancient Languages' of India like Sanskrit and Prakrit to which we have added, besides modern Western Hindi, those families of languages which played a role in the formation of Indian languages. It will include, the Mundari from the Sino-Tbetan family, the Mon Kmer from the  Mongolic Altaic family, the Tamil from the Dravidian

family and Arabic from the Semitic family. 

-The second group will offer  a comparison between  European Gypsy, Sanskrit, Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Gujarati, Rajastani (Marwari), Panjabi and Bengali.   

-The third group will collect together the so-called 'Gypsy languages' of India.     

-The forth group, later and in a different volume, will cover in comparative form all the selected languages.

Anthology of 400 Nomadic Groups and Gypsies of India

Here follows the Anthology of 400 Nomadic groups and Gypsies of India.At times I could find that some of the conclusions or even assertion. The Authors of the past have reached on a group are too negative. Still I did not hesitate to quote the same, without watering it down. Thus this becomes an authentic reference work for researchers. The majority of the analysis is mainly on some parts of a group in a short historical time period.