Related question; I heard the term "gypsy" was derived from "Egypt," so at least English speakers thought they were from Egypt (if not the Roma themselves). Any truth to that?

First of all, I apologise if the answer is a bit vague and all over the place, but unfortunately such is our history. First of all, you need to consider that during the early 19th century, gypsies were still enslaved in Eastern European countries (the abolition in Romania, at the very least, came in a series of laws, ranging from 1843 to 1860), or if free people, the majority would not be literate. Additionally, it is questionable at best to talk about gypsies as a single entity, due to the vast differences in the language, customs, religions of different communities, and above all, different pulses of migration into Europe, and whether they migrated to Western Europe in the 14-15th century or were enslaved in Eastern Europe (Blasco, in ‘Gypsy/Roma diasporas: a comparative perspective’ offers a good overview and analysis of the variation in gypsy communities).

Regarding the academic awareness of gypsy descent from India, the earliest source I could find was that of Valyi Isvtan in 1760, who noted on the linguistic similarities between central European Gypsies and Indians, and we have several later mentions of this similarity among scholars in the following centuries. Ian Hancock covers this quite well in his books, but if you want a mostly historical overview, then ‘Romani in Contact: The History, Structure and Sociology of a Language’ is best. There are several other books written on it, but considering Hancock is a gypsy himself, I have noticed his linguistic abilities and access to various gypsy communities meant that he was able to better point out misinterpretations or mistranslations in the language by other non-gypsy writers/historians of the history and language.

In fact, speaking of Iran, apparently Iranian visitors in 19th century Europe were able to point out the similarities of their language to gypsies, but they claimed that the version spoken by them was a very old, crude and ‘vulgar’ language (this can be found in the Introduction chapter of Hancock’s book mentioned above).

Moving on to gypsy awareness of their descent, in a collection of essays titled ‘Warning! Educated Gypsy’ (and a few other writers, such as Okely’s ‘The Traveller-gysies’ as a UK-based example) Hancock mentions how some gypsy communities would often pass on oral histories of a journey from the East, although actual dates, or regions in India were never actually mentioned, and hence the actual place of origin was still unknown even to gypsies with such oral traditions (as seen in an ethnography by Blasco on the Gitanos of Jarana). However, this is definitely not the case with every gypsy community, as in fact my own community is only aware of an Indian ancestry from modern academic sources and old history books (and confirmed to me by a DNA test, which found that I am 1/3 South Asian). These gypsy oral histories would often be intermingled with mythologies of creation, and association with a female goddess at this place of origin, so the weight of it from an academic point of view is questionable at best.

One last point is that despite Hancock’s claims, I have seen no actual historical evidence (just linguistic analysis, which I am sceptical of) of our ancestors being a caste of warriors, on a mission of defending India from Islam, which seems to be a very popular theory among this field of study. I think Tcherenkov and Laederich make a stronger argument in ‘The Rroma: History, Language and Groups’ claiming that it was probably a pulse of several migrations of artisans and tradesmen, which certainly seems more believable to me considering the early historical occupations of gypsies in Europe, mostly revolving around the production of small goods and entertainment.

On a related note: In the 11th century Living of Saint George the Hagiorite the wandering magicians and tricksters of Anatolia are referred to as ατσίγγανος (lit. untouchables) and this became the term for gypsies from the Balkans to Germany and may also be the source for the terms used in English and French. Does anyone know how the Indian Dalits came to be known as "untouchables" in latter day Europe? Were 11th century Byzantian intellectuals in the know about the caste system in India? Or did they have a system of their own, which then provided us with the metaphor we would transfer to India?

Another related question: I suppose that when leaving India the Gypsies would be either muslims or hindus. How was the Romas christianized?

Hi there people!

In this thread, you see a lot of removed comments. This is because the rules of this sub mandate that all comments need to be in-depth, comprehensive, informative, and of the level an academic historian would provide. This is why we don't accept answers based on Wikipedia, personal anecdotes or speculation.

I can only urge patience and checking the thread again to see if and when someone has written an answer to this question.

Unfortunately however in this case, from my limited experience with studying Nazi policies directed against the Romani people, this might be one of the few highly upvoted threads in this sub that might not receive an answer at all. Studying the history of the Roma people, and especially their historical perspective is notoriously difficult. Due to the decades and centuries of persecution in Europe, sources for the Roma perspective on things are far and few between. Oftentimes, we can only study this group via what the people persecuting are writing about them and these people are notoriously ignorant towards how the Romani people perceived themselves among other things.

Furthermore as a result of this still ongoing history of persecution and discrimination, it is difficult to as an outsider gain access to various Roma communities, thus making it difficult to gain access to their perspective on their own history, which no doubt could shed light on questions like this. It furthermore is my unfortunate experience as someone living in Central Europe that the same kinds of still ongoing discrimination is also in a lot of times preventing people of the Roma community to gain access to institutions of higher education, thus preventing people who would have interest as well as the access to better study questions such as these from actually doing so.

To give you an example: A colleague of mine has been working for ten years on a study of the history of Roma and Sinti during the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union. Four years of these he spent on gaining the trust and access to various now Russian and other Roma communities.

So, to sum up: I do hope that somebody will show up and provide an answer that goes beyond what everyone of you could find on wikipedia or with a quick google search and that is based upon scholarly literature. However, I also want to caution you that there might not be an answer to this question at all because indeed nobody has researched it yet or because there are simply no sources available to people in a position to study it.

For more general information on these kinds of phenomena, please see this Monday Methods Thread: Can the subaltern speak.

No.

Even the most passionate academics obsessed with declaring us Indian admit most Roms would have answered 'Egypt' if asked where we came from originally. I personally know a lot of families with mythology stories involving Gypsy emperors in Egypt. Others have more colourful fantastical stories involving clay and golems and celestial tattoos, but with one continual pattern of refraining from dwelling on border lines and ethnicities and countries.

Fundamentally, I don't know any Rom who came from poverty and illiteracy who thinks of identity in that way, as defined by genes and where we might have been a thousand years ago. We see it as defined by our modern perception of memory, and profoundly ours. Godjipe is our word for knowledge, and it's not synonymous with Truth, it's about perception.