the guilty and sends them to hell, but their ideas are very vague: they also worship Syam Singh, a deified ancestor who, like Gandak, was merely a long successful robber. The Dom worships the jemmy by which he effects a burglarious entry, just as (above) we saw the pre-classical cultus of weapons (spear, axe, sword) among the nomads of the great Steppes of E. Europe and Central Asia.[1]
De Goeje's Indian Origin (800 a.d.).
7. But even if we deny the presence of true gipsies in India, notice must be taken of de Goeje's hypothesis of origin in the Jat or Luri migration into Persia and so westwards (c. 450 a.d. and again 710).[2] They advanced into the 'land of Rum' or Byzantine Empire, c. 800, and following years; Michael II., the founder of the longest dynasty in 'Roman' annals, was called an Athingan by his political rivals. Under Caliph Motasim (c. 820) the marshlands near Basra were occupied by vagrant Hindus called Yat (in Arabic Zott), who infested the roads and levied a heavy blackmail from ships on the Tigris. He had tried in vain to suppress them since 821, but in 834 was obliged by the entreaties of the Basrenes to complete the task in earnest. The Zott resisted for seven months and they capitulated on condition of safety for life and property. They were conducted in triumph through Bagdad in their national costume, conveyed in boats and playing their (already) national music: thence they were taken to Anazarbus on the Byzantine frontier. Twenty years later (or at the close of the reign of Michael the Inebriate, 857) they entered Asia Minor and spread into Europe under the double name of Ziganes ((
Greek characters)) and Egyptians (de Goeje, Mémoire sur les Migrations des Ziganes à travers
