tless, without any settled homes, and for the most part without even
habitations. They have no distinct language of their own, but speak a
dialect of Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang or _argot_ terms of
their own that is unintelligible to other classes. In "The People of
India" mention is made of another class of wandering Indians, called
Nuts, or Naths, who correspond to the European Gipsy tribes, and like
these, have no settled home. They are constant thieves. The men are
clever as acrobats. The women attend their performances, and sing or
play on native drums or tambourines. The Nuts do not mix with or
intermarry with other tribes. They live for the most part in tents made
of black blanket stuff, and move from village to village through all
parts of the country. They are as a marked race, and generally
distrusted wherever they go.

They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers,
blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents. They eat everything, except
garlic. There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by
travellers as "Gipsies." They are travelling merchants or pedlars.
Among all of these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in
England. This slang extends even into Persia. Each tribe has its own,
but the general name for it is _Rom_.

It has never been pointed out, however, that there is in Northern and
Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded even by the Nats and
Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly Gipsy. "We have
met," says one writer, "in London with a poor Mohammedan Hindu of
Calcutta. This man had in his youth lived with these wanderers, and
been, in fact, one of them. He had also, as is common with intelligent
Mohammedans, written his autobiography, embodying in it a vocabulary of
the Indian Gipsy language. This MS. had unfortunately been burned by his
English wife, who informed the writer that she had done so 'because she
was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not understand.'
With the assistance of an eminent Oriental scholar who is perfectly
familiar with both Hindustani and Romany, this man was carefully
examined. He declared that these were the real Gipsies of India, 'like
English Gipsies here.' 'People in India called them Trablus or Syrians,
a misapplied word, derived from a town in Syria, which in turn bears the
Arabic name for Tripoli. But they were, as he was certain, pure Hindus,
and n