oxicating liquors, and smoking ganjia, or cured
hemp leaves, to a great extent. Their food can hardly be particularised,
and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however, there
are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and eaten; and at
marriages and other domestic occurrences feasts are provided, which
usually end in foul orgies. In the clothes and person the Changars are
decidedly unclean, and indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the
tribes can hardly be exceeded.

The Doms are a race of Gipsies found from Central India to the far
Northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appear as the
Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan. In "The People of India," we
are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a
marked difference from those who surround them (in Behar). The Hindus
admit their claim to antiquity. Their designation in the Shastras is
Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater. They are wanderers, they make baskets and
mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings
on it. They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling
all dead bodies. They eat all animals which have died a natural death,
and are particularly fond of pork of this description. "Notwithstanding
profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and
it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white."
The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers.
Travellers speak of them as "Gipsies." A specimen which we have of their
language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an
error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English Gipsy, and be
called pure Romany. Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his
wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana.
_D_ in Hindustani is found as _r_ in English Gipsy speech--_e.g._, _doi_,
a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as _roi_. Now in common Romany we
have, even in London:--

Rom A Gipsy.
Romni A Gipsy wife.
Romnipen Gipsydom.

Of this word _rom_ we shall more to say. It may be observed that there
are in the Indian _Dom_ certain distinctly-marked and degrading features,
characteristic of the European Gipsy, which are out of keeping with the
habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the
caliphs. Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, m