Eye--Sikhs--Stan, Hindostan, Iranistan--The true origin of Slang--Tat,
the Essence of Being--Bahar and Bar--The Origin of the Words Rom and
Romni.--Dom and Domni--The Hindi tem--Gipsy and Hindustani points of
the Compass--Salaam and Shulam--Sarisham!--The Cups--Women's treading
on objects--Horseflesh--English and Foreign Gipsies--Bohemian and
Rommany.

A learned Sclavonian--Michael von Kogalnitschan--has said of Rommany,
that he found it interesting to be able to study a Hindu dialect in the
heart of Europe. He is quite right; but as mythology far surpasses any
philology in interest, as regards its relations to poetry, how much more
wonderful is it to find--to-day in England--traces of the tremendous
avatars, whose souls were gods, long ago in India. And though these
traces be faint, it is still apparent enough that they really exist.

One day an old Gipsy, who is said to be more than usually "deep" in
Rommany, and to have had unusual opportunity for acquiring such knowledge
from Gipsies older and deeper than himself, sent word to me, to know if
"the rye" was aware that Boro Duvel, or the Great God, was an old Rommany
expression for water? I thought that this was a singular message to come
from a tent at Battersea, and asked my special Gipsy _factotum_, why God
should be called water, or water, God? And he replied in the following
words:

"Panni is the Boro Duvel, and it is Bishnoo or Vishnoo, because it pells
alay from the Boro Duvel. '_Vishnu is the Boro Duvel then_?'--Avali.
There can't be no stretch adoi--can there, rya? Duvel is Duvel all the
world over--but by the right _formation_, Vishnoo is the Duvel's ratt.
I've shuned adovo but dusta cheiruses. An' the snow is poris, that jals
from the angels' winguses. And what I penned, that Bishnoo is the
Duvel's ratt, is puro Rommanis, and jinned by saw our foki." {110}

Now in India, Vishnu and Indra are the gods of the rain.

The learned, who insist that as there ought to be, so there must be, but
a single source of derivation for every word, ignoring the fact that a
dozen causes may aid in its formation, will at once declare that, as
Bishnoo or Vishnoo is derived from the old Gipsy Brishni or Brschindo,
and this from the Hindu Barish, and the Sanscrit Varish or Prish, there
can be "no rational ground" for connecting the English Gipsy word with
the Hindu god. But who can tell what secret undercurrents of dim
tradition and vague association may have come d