aking
baskets, eating carrion, living for drunkenness, does not agree with
anything we can learn of the Jats. Yet the European Gipsies are all
this, and at the same time 'horsey' like the Jats. Is it not extremely
probable that during the "out-wandering" the Dom communicated his name
and habits to his fellow-emigrants?

The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other
European Gipsies appears to link them with the Luri of Persia. These are
distinctly Gipsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves,
fortune-tellers, and minstrels. The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that
about the year 420 A.D., Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram
Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels,
male and female, called _Luri_. Though lands were allotted to them, with
corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds.
Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:--

"They bear a marked affinity to the Gipsies of Europe." ["Travels in
Beloochistan and Scinde," p. 153.] "They speak a dialect peculiar to
themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping
and pilfering. Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and
music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and
monkeys that are broken in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks. In
each company there are always two or three members who profess . . .
modes of divining which procure them a ready admission into every
society." This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and
monkeys, identifies them with the Ricinari, or bear-leading Gipsies of
Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania. A party of these lately
came to England. We have seen these Syrian Ricinari in Egypt. They are
unquestionably Gipsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied
the early migration of Jats and Doms.

The following is the description of another low-caste, wandering tribe of
Indians, taken from "The People of India," called "Sanseeas," vagrants of
no particular creed, and make their head-quarters near Delhi. The
editor, speaking of this tribe, says that they have been vagrants from
the earliest periods of Indian history. They may have accompanied Aryan
immigrants or invaders, or they may have risen out of aboriginal tribes;
but whatever their origin, they have not altered in any respect, and
continue to prey upon its po