What is a gypsy?

Gypsies are also called tzigans. A country characterized by vagrancy. Originally living in the northwest of India, 10 century began to move out and spread all over the world.

Shigang language belongs to Indo-European Neo-Indian language family. Gypsies now speak their local language and believe in local popular religions. Good at singing and dancing.

The Ibokan people have a racial name. Cigang people have different names in different areas. The British call them Gypsies, the French call them Bohemians, the Spaniards call them Flamengos, the Russians call them Zgang, the Albanians call them Evgitz, the Greeks call them Aginganos, the Iranians call them Rory, and Sri Lanka calls them Iaquintaka ... Gypsies call themselves Roma, and they call themselves.

Zigong people have traveled all over Europe, Asia, America, North Africa and Australia, but since World War II, the Balkans has become the most concentrated area of Zigong people in the world. In the cities of Balkan countries, Zgang people are everywhere. In Yugoslavia, there is even a proverb that "a town cannot be called a town without Zgang people".

According to the latest research, the ancestors of the Shigang people lived in Punjab, India. After about 10 century, under the pressure of war and famine, Cigang people began to leave India and emigrate. They don't have a fixed residence, but take caravans as their homes and means of transportation, make a living as street performers, wander from one city to another, and gradually become a world-famous wandering nation. With the progress of the times, in today's Yugoslavia, it is difficult to see the typical Zgang caravan, and most Zgang people live a settled life. But most of them don't have stable jobs. They mainly make a living by cleaning cars, reading palms, selling smuggled cigarettes and buying and selling foreign exchange.

From the French writer Merimee's Carmen, we can see some characteristics of this nation: enthusiasm and unrestrained, free and easy, wandering between the city and the countryside. Gypsies wander all the year round, unwilling to be bound by any other laws, which has become the norm since the eleventh century. Even today, 95% of gypsies still live in stone houses, but they still stick to the tradition of their ancestors and live tightly in a small space decorated with carpets, just like they used to live in an open carriage.

In their daily customs, there are two important concepts-purity and impure. For example, a woman's skirt accidentally sweeps into a man's bowl, so that bowl of vegetables will inevitably be dumped; In the convertible where they wander all the year round, there are always three buckets of water, one for washing food, one for washing face and the third for washing feet. If someone makes a mistake carelessly, they will be punished. It has its own court. When a person or a family has a dispute lawsuit, there is no trial prison. Punishment can kill a person, but it can't deprive a person of his freedom. Serious criminals classified as "unclean" will be excluded from the tribe. An isolated gypsy, the value of survival is almost zero.

Fortune-telling is a traditional occupation of gypsies, especially gypsy women. Nowadays, there are few traditional gypsies with mysterious crystal balls. Fortune tellers mostly use special gypsy fortune-telling cards to tell people's fortune. Most gypsy fortune tellers can play a "good hand": they turn a deck of cards around in their hands, wave a stack, throw another stack with their backhand, and then let you draw a few cards from it.

For centuries, the traditional occupation of Gypsies has been "bearing people". They buy cubs from people who specialize in poaching, then pull out bears' teeth and sharp claws, and then train them to perform various performances. But today, there are not many people still engaged in this old industry. Most people prefer to take "government asylum" as their occupation-receiving relief subsidies from the Social Security Bureau. For them, this is not as shameful as begging, but a job given by God.

Gypsy language and culture have a history of more than 500 years in Europe. Nevertheless, in the French province of Great Britain, Gypsies are still regarded as foreigners and may be detained by the police at any time. And the related customs and agricultural land laws and regulations have also produced more and more unfavorable restrictions on it. Europeans always hope that Gypsies will continue to play guitar and dance by the campfire, but at the same time they hope that they will settle down, have a normal job, pay income tax regularly and send their children to school for education.

However, gypsies don't think so. They will continue to live like gypsies-wandering around.

For hundreds of years, international ethnologists have been keen to study the origin and migration route of the wandering Gypsies, especially this unique nation, and discuss it as a special knowledge. However, due to the lack of historical materials, scholars from all over the world often indulge in various controversial concepts or oral legends for a long time without facing up to historical reality. In the research, they expound their views on the basis of insufficient information, so it is inevitable that there are shortcomings or one-sidedness. He still has his own opinions and opinions, but he can't draw a unified and correct conclusion with sufficient historical evidence, and some even draw many wrong conclusions. One of the most common misconceptions is that they are regarded as Egyptians. This statement has been circulating for hundreds of years, and even some Gypsies themselves use this theory to talk about their ancestors. For example, a group of Gypsies who arrived in Paris in the winter of A.D. 1427 said that their origin was Egypt.

The name Gypsy itself is wrong, because Gypsy (Gypsy or Gypsy) evolved from the English word Egyptian, which is the traditional name of the British and most countries in the world. This is because in the15th century, Europeans didn't know much about the strangers who wandered around them and mistakenly thought they were from Egypt, so they called them "Egyptians" and gradually became "Gypsies". Gypsies call themselves Roma, which means "people" in gypsy language. The term "Roma" was used by the Roma international organization founded in 1965, and is now recognized and respected internationally. However, most people still call them Gypsies because of their habits and traditional names.

Rome is called Gypsy, not only because of the long-term ignorance of the origin and history of this nation, but also because of the lack of sufficient written materials in the process of studying Gypsies. Therefore, the discussion of its origin, migration and other history is always based on some assumptions, or preconceived without previous conclusions.

In addition to the British who think they originated in Egypt, the French think they are probably from Bohemia, so they are called Bohemians, and there are Gypsies, Gitans, Zingari and so on. The Spaniards called them Gypsies and Bohemians, but they also called them Atsigano or Greeks, thinking that they came from Greece, and the former Soviet Union also called them Atsigano. In a word, Gypsies have many names, but they are all imposed on them by other nationalities. Their ethnic origin is determined according to subjective assumptions, and their history is also compiled. This situation lasted for hundreds of years, and it was not until the end of18th century that the research on gypsies made a breakthrough.

Scholars from all over the world have studied, speculated and discussed the origin of Gypsies for hundreds of years, and finally achieved gratifying results. According to textual research, the origin of Gypsies is neither Egypt nor Bohemia, nor Greece or Persia, but India. Two German scholars Rudiger and Grellmann and British scholar Jacob Bryan made this outstanding contribution at the end of18th century. All three of them are linguists. Through the study of gypsy dialects from 65438 to 1980s in 2008, they independently and almost simultaneously verified that the languages of European gypsies came from India, and many of them were very similar to Indian Sanskrit and Indian Hindi.

Since then, sampson, a British scholar, has made extensive and in-depth research on the language of Gypsies, and made further discoveries on the basis of previous achievements. He systematically sorted out the gypsy dialects in Venice. In the course of research, sampson found that this language contains many foreign words, and obtained a lot of data. So as to find sufficient evidence for the theory that Gypsies originated in India. Sampson made a systematic analysis of the loanwords contained in the dialects of the gypsies in Venice, including 36 Italian words, 65,438+050 English words, 430 words from various languages between Persia and Venice, and 565,438+08 words from Hindi, which shows that Hindi had a great influence on the languages of the gypsies at that time. Later, many scholars engaged in the study of Romany, and they also found that, like Romany in Europe, Romany in Asia also contains a large number of Indian words, and in written language, it is similar to Hindi in grammar.

Scholars from all over the world have come to the conclusion that the language of gypsies comes from the language of India; Gypsies originated in India. Scholars are no longer immersed in fantasy, speculation and legend, but face reality and explore historical materials for research, thus constantly achieving fruitful results. However, it seems that there are still some shortcomings in studying the origin of Gypsies from the perspective of linguistics. We also need to study the history of this nation, trace its national origin and prove that its birthplace is in India.

In order to further prove that Gypsies originated in India, it is necessary to study the social system, culture and customs of this ancient nation. In ancient India, there was a widely circulated and well-known national kingdom. By the 4th century, this nation, its ancient culture and unusual customs attracted people's attention. Dom people are mostly music lovers and fortune tellers. At this point, they were mentioned in an astronomical paper written in Sanskrit in the 6th century A.D., and they were called Gand—harva (music lovers). Dom people can sing and dance well, and some make a living by it. Garhana, an ancient Indian historian, mentioned this situation many times in his Chronicle of Kashmir. According to Olier Stein, a British archaeologist and explorer, some Dom people make a living by busking, and the best of them are even favored by the king, who can go in and out of the palace. But this situation is rare. In most cases, Dom people are despised by other ethnic groups in India. They don't have a fixed occupation, except for wandering around the rivers and lakes as actresses, and are often employed in lower-level occupations, such as night watchman, street sweeper, executioner, craftsman and so on. Although Dom people are versatile and good at making a living, local farmers of all ethnic groups look down on them and forbid them to get married.

There used to be a Dom group that believed in Islam, with about 300 people, in the Gilgit area in the north of Kishmiyong. These people attracted the attention of Lori Yi, a British oriental linguist, and studied their language, culture, customs and history, proving that these DOM migrated from Belch in the 2nd or 3rd century. Lorima found that Dom people living in Gilgit generally speak two or three languages in order to make a living and adapt to the needs of living conditions and environment in various places. Although there are many foreign words in the Indian language they use, these words are very different from their mother tongue.

Dom people were often associated with smelting and making metal utensils in history, and this skill was passed on to their descendants, Gypsies. Indeed, Dom and Gypsies have gained considerable benefits from this industry. Although ancient India can't be said to be the birthplace of ironmaking, it enjoys a high reputation in smelting and ironmaking, and it has been quite developed in AD 1 century. Puniri, an ancient Roman politician, thought that India had the best iron quality. According to legend, the 65,438+07-foot-high Darta, built in the 4th-5th century, was built with high-quality iron and superb technology. Like gypsies today, a considerable number of gypsies are also engaged in repair work. They do manual work with simple tools, repair farm tools and repair pots and pans for others. Interestingly, the bellows they used when repairing iron were not made of wood, but two leather bags. The method of blowing is also very strange, not with hands, but with feet; This kind of bellows has also been used by Als people in Deccan Plateau, India, who were ruled by Dom people before the Hindu dynasty in India. It is also used by European gypsies. By studying Dom's customs, culture and history, we can draw the conclusion that Dom in ancient times was the ancestor of Gypsies.