11-01-001
GIPSY LANGUAGES.
INTRODUCTION.
Migratory tribes are found all over India, and are of different kinds. Some
of them, like the Pe
h
r
s,
are descended from adventurers and individuals belonging to various castes and
trades; others, like the Banjrs,
s, and so on, are occupational
units, who wander all over the country in pursuance of their trade; others again
are much of the same kind as the Gipsies of Europe, tumblers, jugglers, acrobats,
or thieves and robbers, who have come under the Criminal Tribes Act.
It has become customary to call these tribes Gipsies, but this designation does not imply any connexion between them and the Gipsies of Europe. The word Gipsy, which is, as is well known, a corruption of Egyptian, was originally applied to those well-known migratory tribes who began to make their name known and feared in Europe from the beginning of the 15th century, because they described themselves as coming from Egypt. The word has then also come to be used to denote other peoples of similar, migratory, habits, and this is the sense in which it has been used in this Survey. The Gipsy Languages are, accord- ingly, dialects spoken by the vagrant tribes of India.
Our information about these forms of speech is necessarily limited. Many of
these vagrants simply speak the language of their neighbours. Others are bilingual
or even multilingual, adopting the speech of the district where they happen
to stay in all their dealings with outsiders, but retaining a peculiar dialect
of their own when talking among themselves. For this latter purpose many of
these tribes have also developed a secret argot, which they commonly call Prs,
'Persian,' and they are naturally shy of initiating others into it. These argots
will be dealt with below. They have not anything to do with grammar, but are
based on some dialect, which may be designated as the home tongue of the tribe.
Moreover, such tribes as have not developed any artificial argot, often have
a dialect of their own. Such forms of speech cannot, of course, be expected
to present the same consistency as ordinary vernaculars. It is a consequence
of the migratory habits of the tribes, that their languages are to some extent
mixed. Where the base is comparatively uniform and practically identical with
one definite tongue, such dialects have, in this Survey, been dealt with in
connexion with that form of speech. Thus the dialects of the following vagrant
tribes have been described in connexion with Draviian
languages in Vol. IV of this Survey.
|
Name of dialect.
|
Estimated number of speakers
|
| Korava and Yerukala... |
55,116
|
| Kaik... |
8,289
|
Burga ... |
265
|
G lar... |
3,614
|
| Kurumba... |
10,399
|
| Vaar... |
27,099
|
|
TOTAL.
|
104,782
|
VOL. XI.
B