The Origins of the Roma – in brief / E Romenge Telunipena
(September 2019)
I am often asked who our ancestors were, how and when we came to leave India. Therefore I decided to write a short article summarizing the key parts of what we know – of course, with a culture that until recently was entirely oral, there will always be areas of doubt and dispute, but there is much that we do know.
There
are many clues to our real origins, but the most telling of all is
simply our endonym, Roma. Listen to how it's pronounced by speakers
of the oldest Romani dialects: the R is retroflexed. It comes, of
course, from the Sanskrit caste designation डोम,
and the ड (retroflexed D) of
Sanskrit/Prakrit changed systematically to ड़
(retroflexed R) in early Romani – for more details, see my
article Why are Roma called
“Roma”? Where did our endonym come from?
We are in fact a mixture of different nomadic groups who left India over a timespan of several centuries, beginning probably in the mid to late first millennium CE and continuing into the second. That we are not a single homogeneous group is shown by DNA studies and dialect differences, and is also apparent simply from our appearance: certain tribes, or groups of tribes, are readily distinguishable simply from our looks.
Among our ancestors were Gaddi Lohar (nomadic metalworkers, who brought their skills to medieval Europe – and even today, many Roma are skilled metalworkers), Nat (dancers and acrobats), Kalbelia/Sapera (ask anyone who knows the old ways what a sàpengri is and you'll see that!), traders (probably related to the Banjara) and others, and some tribes have a great deal of shared blood with the nowadays Jatt people, as evidenced by the fact that the Jatt Glaucoma Mutation, which is unique to the Jatt people, is also found in many Roma lineages – my family carries it and my mother developed the disease in middle age. And for that matter, I get asked on a regular basis if I am a Jattni simply because of my looks.
All of these ancestral groups came into contact in the Balkans, which is why there is a fairly high degree of commonality in the ancient roots of our different dialects, though individual dialects still preserve differences that clearly originated in India and further divergence and also mixing occurred during the many migrations in which our ancestors spread across Europe and later, across the world.
Further evidence of our origins among Indian nomads is provided by cultural practices. One of the most striking is the traditional Romani marriage ritual, which is still practiced by some clans in spite of the widespread advent of Christian or Muslim beliefs into our communities: the couple is bound at the wrists by the officiating priestess/elder with a loli dori (red/orange cord), they circle sunwise (turning always to the right) seven times around a sacred fire (the Goddess of Fire Yàg, our version of Agni in the standard Hindu pantheon, is the greatest protector and purifier), and then jump a broomstick together. That exact same ritual is used still by some nomadic tribes in India. And a further point of interest: if you think that sounds similar to the handfasting ritual used by a lot of Western Pagans in Celtic traditions, then you're correct: during the Burning Times, the persecution of all non-Christian peoples pushed the Roma into contact with gàdje who still kept the old Pagan ways, and there was considerable cultural exchange and some intermarriages.
Still on the topic of our Phuro Pachipen or traditional spiritual beliefs, it is very clearly a mixed tradition that combines Hinduism (our Deities include Barma (Brahma), Bishnu (Vishnu), Shiva, Yandra (Indra), Kàli Sara (Durga), Kali, Bavàl (Pavana), Yàg (Agni), Kham (Surya), Chun (Chandra) and others) with ancient animistic beliefs – there are very many dukha or spirits, good and bad, everywhere. Such mixed systems are also found among many of India's nomads. And rather uniquely we have a Goddess of Fog called Magla, who clearly only entered our pantheon when we arrived in Europe, fog being a major danger to nomads in Europe but not so much in India or the Middle East – magla is an archaic Slavic word, still found in Bulgarian.
Another very obvious cultural practice is the Kris, or Romani tribal “court”. Traditionally each tribe or clan has a panel of five particularly respected elders (traditionally, always men; nowadays, not always five of them) who deal with disputes and infractions against our tribal law. Our justice system is based on restitution and consensus much more than on adversity and punishment, in order to avoid the development of feuds. This is of course the panchayat system used in many Indian nomadic tribes.
Why did we leave? This is an area subject to a degree of uncertainty, but every tribe has some kind of origin story in which we were expelled from our homeland because of some terrible sin committed by our ancestors and condemned to wander the world. Details vary, and in some cases have become conflated with Christian mythology, but by examining the least-corrupted versions it is clear that our ancestors were expelled essentially because we annoyed the ruling castes. The version of the story that I know is quite clear that it was ostensibly our non-standard “mixed” version of Hinduism, but more truthfully our rather rebellious nature and refusal to be bound by gàdjikane rules, and above all our use of magic that led to our expulsion – basically, the Brahmins were afraid of us, an out-caste group that they could not control and who were not afraid to use magic combatively (and traditional Romani magic is extremely effective) and so we were banished.
There are many other evidences of our origins as a mix of different Indian nomadic tribes, enough in fact to fill a book, but that is beyond the scope of a short article like this one. Therefore I will finish with just one more little gem of linguistic evidence: the word gàdjo (anyone not Roma). Much nonsense has been concocted by gàdje tsiganologists about the supposed origins of this word, typically they either claim it's a loanword or a derivative of ghar (a house) to mean someone non-nomadic. It is neither. It is an ancient Indian word used by other nomadic tribes to mean “not one of us”: for example, in the dialect of the Punjabi Sikligars, कज्ज [kajja], and in that of the Nat, काजा [kājā]. The change of the final -a to -o in masculine nouns is of course systematic in Romani, and interchanging of g and k is commonplace (for example ghar becomes kher in Romani). Apply those changes to the word as used by the Indian nomads and you get precisely our word gàdjo.
Ame shem e chala e pirale Indiakrenge!
(We are the descendants of the nomadic Indians!)