Shaster, by adding
that "any feller's bettin'-book on the race-ground was a _shasterni lil_,
'cos it's written."

I have never heard of the evil eye among the lower orders of English, but
among Gipsies a belief in it is as common as among Hindus, and both
indicate it by the same word, _seer_ or _sihr_. In India _sihr_, it is
true, is applied to enchantment or magic in general, but in this case the
whole may very well stand for a part. I may add that my own
communications on the subject of the _jettatura_, and the proper means of
averting it by means of crab's claws, horns, and the usual sign of the
fore and little finger, were received by a Gipsy auditor with great faith
and interest.

To show, teach, or learn, is expressed in Gipsy by the word _sikker_,
_sig_, or _seek_. The reader may not be aware that the Sikhs of India
derive their name from the same root, as appears from the following
extract from Dr Paspati's _etudes_: "_Sikava_, v. prim. 1 cl. 1 conj.
part, siklo', montrer, apprendre. Sanskrit, s'iks', to learn, to acquire
science; siksaka, adj., a learner, a teacher. Hindustani, seek'hna,
v.a., to learn, to acquire; seek'h, s.f., admonition." I next inquired
why they were called Seeks, and they told me it was a word borrowed from
one of the commandments of their founder, which signifies 'learn thou,'
and that it was adopted to distinguish the sect soon after he
disappeared. The word, as is well known, has the same import in the
Hindoovee" ("Asiatic Researches," vol. i. p. 293, and vol. ii. p. 200).
This was a noble word to give a name to a body of followers supposed to
be devoted to knowledge and truth.

The English Gipsy calls a mermaid a _pintni_; in Hindu it is _bint ool
buhr_, a maid of the sea. Bero in Gipsy is the sea or a ship, but the
Rommany had reduced the term to the original _bint_, by which a girl is
known all over the East.

"Ya bint' Eeskendereyeh."

_Stan_ is a word confounded by Gipsies with both _stand_, a place at the
races or a fair, and _tan_, a stopping-place, from which it was probably
derived. But it agrees in sound and meaning with the Eastern _stan_, "a
place, station," and by application "country," so familiar to the reader
in Hindustan, Iranistan, Beloochistan, and many other names. It is
curious to find in the Gipsy tan not only the root-word of a tent, but
also the "Alabama," or "here we rest," applied by the world's early
travellers to so many places in the Morni