The Origins of Gypsies
The origins of Gypsies remained obscure for centuries following their arrival in Europe. Their obviously alien nature has led to them having been mystified and romanticized by many throughout history — mostly by those who did not have direct and long-term contact with them. It did not help that they themselves either genuinely forgot, or refused to reveal their origins.
It is known today that Gypsies originate from present day India: looking at the average Gypsy and an Indian with heavy Dravidian admixture, the similarity is obvious. Also, their language is of undoubtedly Indo-Aryan origin. The first ten numbers in the Lovari dialect of Gypsy language are: yekh, duy, trin, shtar, panzh, shov, efta, ochto, inja, desh. The similarity with many other Indo-European languages is obvious, but nevertheless, we give the first ten numbers in Sanskrit as well: ekam, dve, trīṇi, catvāri, pañca, ṣaṭ, sapta, aṣṭa, nava, daśa.1
The geographical origin is thus clear. Questions still remain though. One of the most important ones is why they left India and started to roam, reaching the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. We believe that the profound understanding of their ethnogenesis lies in one of the exonyms they received. In order to get a better picture of this group though, we are going to touch upon their endonyms first.
The most well-known endonym is roma (plural of rom): the one currently being pushed as the «politically correct» term to use as an exonym as well. Rom in the Gypsy language simply means «man», «person». It would be quite absurd to refer to Gypsies as «men», and by logic admit that no other group of people really count as human beings. The hypocrisy of those crying about «sensibilities» really shines through here. It should also be noted here that Gypsies have a seperate word to label non-Gypsies: gazho — much like Hebrew goy can be applied to every man of non-Jewish origins. As an aside, we should dispel a common misconception here: many think the Gypsies of our days do not speak their own language anymore. It is understandable, since one can rarely — if ever — hear a Gypsy utter a single word in their language in the presense of non-Gypsies: to do so is to violate a taboo of romanipen, the Gypsy code of conduct. To note one more thing regarding the artificial popularization of the word «roma», it led to great confusion all around the globe: it has become common for people to mix up Romanians and Gypsies.2 Besides mere variations of rom in the form of dom and lom, there are two other endonyms we should mention here: manush and kale. The former simply means «man» and is a descendant of Sanskrit manuṣyà (man, human) which is of course a cognate of English man. The latter, meaning «black one» comes from Sanskrit kāla (black).
As for their exonyms, there are a few idiosyncratic ones, rare and provincial in nature: in France, bohème was a particularly popular word to refer to Gypsies during previous centuries, since a large amount of Gypsies who moved to France, did so from Bohemia.3 In the Lombard language, there exists a name euphemistic and jocular in character, strolegh (astrologer) after the tendency of Gypsies for charlatanism. Most other exonyms however can be classified into two distinct categories.
First, «Gypsy» and its cognates, common in Western and Southern Europe: French gitan, Italian gitano, Greek γιφτος etc. all originate as clippings of «Egyptian». It is commonly stated that it was the Europeans who unilaterally started to refer to them as Egyptians by mistake, but we have doubts about this. Given that Gypsies are very secretive in general, and even in present day Eastern Europe they often refer to themselves as «Italian» — instead of plainly admitting their heritage — to those who are naive enough to believe such lies, we think the confusion just mentioned can be traced back to similar roots: it was the Gypsies who claimed to be Egyptians in the first place.
The second category of exonyms is more widespread in Central and Eastern Europe: German zigeuner, Serbo-Croatian cigan, Romanian țigan, Hungarian cigány. Here, we reach the key point in understanding the origins of Gypsies: these words all come from variations of Byzantine Greek ατσιγγανοι, ultimately from Ancient Greek αθιγγανος — untouchable. From time to time, one encounters the narrative that the Byzantines merely confused Gypsies with an elusive, theoretical Manichaean or Simonian sect whose members were known as «untouchables». We think the reason for such a special name lies elsewhere.
The existence of the caste system is one of the most well-known facts about the history of the Indian subcontinent.4 After the Indo-Aryan conquest, a quite rigid caste system was established in much of India, being heavily linked with the racial differences between the conquerors and the conquered native population of Dravidian origin.5 One of the Sanskrit words to refer to castes is varṇa, itself originally having the primary meaning of «color», later coming to mean «character», «appearance», «quality», «nature», etc. The four traditional castes were the brāhmaṇa, the kṣatriya, the vaiśya, and the śūdra — that is, the sacerdotal caste, the warrior caste, the agricultural caste, and the caste of manual laborers. There were, however, certain groups of people deemed to be «lost causes», people who could not be integrated under the Law of Dharma, and thus, into the caste system — mostly due to them possessing a nature that was seen as even lower than that of a śūdra. These people were described under different names, such as cāṇḍāla or avarṇa — the latter literally meaning «casteless». Any sort of association with these people were seen as taboo: they were «untouchable».
Here lies the connection between the origins of Gypsies and their Byzantine name, ατσιγγανοι: «untouchables». According to us, the ethnogenesis of Gypsies is to be found in their ancestors — seen as casteless untouchables — being expelled from India, leading them to wander towards the West, eventually arriving in the Byzantian Empire by the 11th century. Furthermore, we think that the Byzantines originally knew of the social status bestowed upon Gypsies in their homelands. It is not far-fetched to think that such information could be transmitted between India and the Byzantine Empire, especially since the above given rough arrival date of Gypsies commonly accepted today intersects with the period known as the Iranian Intermezzo — the reclaiming of traditionally Iranian territories from Arabic hands by several Iranian dynasties, and the ensuing cultural renaissance. This, combined with the fact that the Iranian Buyid dynasty’s conquests greatly reduced the gap between the territories of the various Iranian states (some of them neighbouring the North Indian states where Gypsies are thought to have originated from) and that of Byzantium at the expense of the Arabs, would have allowed for a much more free flow of information between India and the Byzantian Empire than during the previous or following time periods. Besides, it would be quite a peculiar coincidence if the Byzantines would have bestowed upon this ethnicity a name that reflects such an important distuinguishing feature of theirs, all due to an accidental mix-up. For well known reasons though, «experts» will keep on holding to such narratives, instead of facing «unfomfortable facts».
In modern Hindi, these numbers are: ek, do, tīn, cār, pāc, chah, sāt, āṭh, nau, das.
Romanians are a group of people in Eastern Europe who speak a romance language, hence the ethnonym «Romanian» (compare with the Rumantsch of Switzerland and other Rhaeto-Romance languages). While Romania admittedly holds a sizeable number of Gypsies, the latter and the native population are cleary distinct both ethnically, linguistically, and culturally.
A historical region in Western Czechia.
It is much less known that the caste system was common in all high civilizations — even if they were less rigid and did not last as long as the one in India — including European ones: up until the revolutions of the 18th and 19th century, one could talk about the three «estates» or «orders» (clergy, nobility, commoners).
Of course, the fact of the Indo-Aryan conquest of the subcontinent is being rabidly attacked by Indian nationalists and self-hating Whites at every single opportunity. Soon, we will see it get officially «debunked» by the clergy of the «religion of love»: the «scientists». Furthermore, even the historical existence of the castes is attacked by these same people, going as far as claiming that the caste system was only established by the British during the 18th century as a means of opression.