Title: The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam
Author: Burton, Richard F.
Language: English
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  THE JEW, THE GYPSY

  and

  EL ISLAM


  [Illustration: From the portrait by Lord Leighton F. Jenkins Imp. Paris
  Richard F. Burton
  [Arabic: الحج عبدالله: Al-Hajj 'abd Allah]]



  The Jew, The Gypsy

  and El Islam


  By the late Captain

  SIR RICHARD F. BURTON

  K.C.M.G. F.R.G.S. ETC

  Translator of
  “The Thousand and One Nights,” and Author of “The
  Book of the Sword,” “My Pilgrimage to Mecca,” etc.


  Edited with a Preface and Brief Notes

  by

  W. H. WILKINS


  London

  Hutchinson & Co

  Paternoster Row

  1898

  Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.



PREFACE


“Good wine needs no bush,” and a good book needs no preface, least
of all from any but the author’s pen. This is a rule more honoured
in the breach than the observance nowadays, when many a classic
appears weighed down and obscured by the unnecessary remarks and bulky
commentaries of some unimportant editor. For my part it will suffice to
give as briefly as possible the history of the MSS. now published for
the first time in this volume.

Sir Richard Burton was a voluminous writer. In addition to the
forty-eight works published during his life, there remained at his
death twenty MSS., some long and some short, in different stages
of completion. A few were ready for press; others were finished to
all intents and purposes, and only required final revision or a few
additions; some were in a state of preparation merely, and for that
reason may never see the light. Those in this volume belong to the
second category. That so many of Burton’s MSS. were unpublished at the
time of his death arose from his habit of working at several books at a
time. In his bedroom, which also served as his study, at Trieste were
some ten or twelve rough deal tables, and on each table were piled the
materials and notes of a different book in a more or less advanced
stage of completion. When he was tired of one, or when he came to a
standstill for lack of material, he would leave it for a time and work
at another. During the last few years of his life the great success
which attended his _Arabian Nights_ led him to turn his attention more
to that phase of his work, to the exclusion of books which had been in
preparation for years. Thus it came about that so many were unpublished
when he died.

As it is well known, he left his writings, published and unpublished,
to his widow, Lady Burton, absolutely, to do with as she thought
best. Lady Burton suppressed what she deemed advisable; the rest she
brought with her to England. She published her _Life of Sir Richard
Burton_, a new edition of his _Arabian Nights_, also _Catullus_ and _Il
Pentamerone_; and was arranging for the publication of others when she
died (March, 1896).

Her sister and executrix, Mrs. Fitzgerald (to whom I should like
to express my gratitude for the many facilities she has given me),
thought fit to entrust me with the work of editing and preparing for
publication the remaining MSS. In the exercise of the discretion she
was good enough to vest in me, I determined to bring out first the
three MSS. which make up this book.

The first part--_The Jew_--has a somewhat curious history. Burton
collected most of the materials for writing it from 1869 to 1871, when
he was Consul at Damascus. His intimate knowledge of Eastern races and
languages, and his sympathy with Oriental habits and lines of thought,
gave him exceptional facilities for ethnological studies of this kind.
Disguised as a native, and unknown to any living soul except his wife,
the British Consul mingled freely with the motley populations of
Damascus, and inspected every quarter of the city--Muslim, Christian,
and Jewish. His inquiries bore fruit in material, not only for this
general essay on the Jew, but for an Appendix dealing with the alleged
rite of Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím or Eastern Jews, and more
especially the mysterious murder of Padre Tomaso at Damascus in 1840.
There is little doubt that his inquiry into these subjects was one of
the reasons which aroused the hostility of the Damascus Jews against
him; and that hostility was a powerful factor, though by no means the
only one, in his recall by Lord Granville in 1871.

Burton, however, had collected a mass of material before he left
Damascus, and in 1873, the year after he had been appointed Consul at
Trieste, he began to put it into shape for publication. It was his
habit to collect for many years the material of a work, to mark, learn,
and inwardly digest it, and then write it in a few months. This plan he
pursued with _The Jew_, which, with the Appendix before mentioned, was
finished and ready for publication towards the end of 1874.

In 1875 he came home from Trieste on leave, and brought the book
with him, intending to publish it forthwith. But first he asked an
influential friend, who was highly placed in the official world,
to read the MS., and give him his opinion as to the expediency of
publishing it. That opinion was adverse, owing to the anti-Semitic
tendency of the book. Other friends also pointed out to Burton that, so
long as he remained in the service of the Government of a country where
the Jews enjoy unprecedented power and position, it would be unwise, to
say the least of it, for him to make enemies of them. These arguments
had weight with Burton, who was not as a rule influenced by anything
but his own will, and for once he deemed discretion the better quality,
and returned with his MS. to Trieste. There were other considerations
too. His wife had just brought out her _Inner Life of Syria_, which was
partly devoted to a defence of his action at Damascus in the matter of
the Jews. It had met with a very favourable reception. His friends were
also endeavouring to obtain for him a K.C.B. and the post of Tangier,
Morocco--the one thing he stayed in the Consular Service in the hope
of obtaining. So the time (1875) was not deemed a propitious one for
making enemies.

Burton put his MS. on the shelf, and waited for the promotion which
never came. It remained there until 1886, when Tangier, which was as
good as promised to Burton, was given by Lord Rosebery to Sir William
Kirby-Green. Then Burton took down the MS. on _The Jew_ again, and had
it recopied. But his wife, who was endeavouring to obtain permission
for him to retire on full pension, pointed out to him that since it had
waited so long it might as well wait until March, 1891, when, his term
of service being finished, they would retire from official life and be
free to publish what they liked. Moreover, they numbered many friends
among the wealthy Jews of Trieste, and had no wish to wound their
susceptibilities. Burton reluctantly agreed to this, but declared his
determination of publishing the book as soon as he had retired from the
Consular Service. Five months before the date of his retirement he died.

Lady Burton had _The Jew_ next on her list for publication at the time
of her death. In publishing it now, therefore, one is only carrying
out her wishes and those of her husband. But in the exercise of the
discretion given to me, I have thought it better to hold over for the
present the Appendix on the alleged rite of Human Sacrifice among the
Sephardím and the murder of Padre Tomaso. The only alternative was to
publish it in a mutilated form; and as I hold strongly that no one has
a right to mutilate the work of another writer, least of all of one
who is dead, I prefer to withhold it until a more convenient season.
I can do this with a clearer conscience, because the Appendix has no
direct bearing on the other part of the book, and because the chapters
on _The Jew_ which are retained are by far the more important. The
tone of even this portion is anti-Semitic; but I do not feel justified
in going contrary to the wishes of the author and suppressing an
interesting ethnological study merely to avoid the possibility of
hurting the susceptibilities of the Hebrew community. It has been
truly said, “Every nation gets the Jew it deserves,” and it may well
be that the superstitions and cruelties of the Eastern Jews have been
generated in them by long centuries of oppression and wrong. From these
superstitions and cruelties the enlightened and highly favoured Jews in
England naturally shrink with abhorrence and repudiation; but it does
not therefore follow they have no existence among their less fortunate
Eastern brethren.

_The Gypsy_ has a far less eventful history, though the materials for
its making were collected during a period of over thirty years, and
were gathered for the most part by personal research, in Asia mainly,
and also in Africa, South America, and Europe. Burton’s interest in
the Gypsies was lifelong; and when he was a lieutenant in the Bombay
Army and quartered in Sindh, he began his investigations concerning
the affinity between the Jats and the Gypsies. During his many travels
in different parts of the world, whenever he had the opportunity
he collected fresh materials with a view to putting them together
some day. In 1875 his controversy with Bataillard provoked him into
compiling his long-contemplated work on the Gypsies. Unfortunately
other interests intervened, and the work was never completed. It was
one of the many unfinished things Burton intended to complete when
he should have quitted the Consular Service. He hoped, for instance,
to make fuller inquiries concerning the Gypsies in France, Germany,
and other countries of Europe, and especially he intended to write
a chapter on the Gypsies in England on his return home. Even as it
stands, however, _The Gypsy_ is a valuable addition to ethnology; for
apart from Burton’s rare knowledge of strange peoples and tongues, his
connexion with the Gypsies lends to the subject a unique interest.
There is no doubt that he was affiliated to this strange people by
nature, if not by descent. To quote from the _Gypsy Lore Journal_[1]:

“Whether there may not be also a tinge of Arab, or perhaps of Gypsy
blood in Burton’s race, is a point which is perhaps open to question.
For the latter suspicion an excuse may be found in the incurable
restlessness which has beset him since his infancy, a restlessness
which has effectually prevented him from ever settling long in any one
place, and in the singular idiosyncrasy which his friends have often
remarked--the peculiarity of his eyes. ‘When it (the eye) looks at
you,’ said one who knows him well, ‘it looks through you, and then,
glazing over, seems to see something behind you. Richard Burton is
the only man (not a Gypsy) with that peculiarity, and he shares with
them the same horror of a corpse, death-bed scenes, and graveyards,
though caring little for his own life.’ When to this remarkable fact
be added the scarcely less interesting detail that ‘Burton’ is one
of the half-dozen distinctively Romany names, it is evident that the
suspicion of Sir Richard Burton having a drop of Gypsy blood in his
descent--crossed and commingled though it be with an English, Scottish,
French, and Irish strain--is not altogether unreasonable.”

On this subject Lady Burton also wrote:

“In the January number of the _Gypsy Lore Journal_ a passage is quoted
from ‘a short sketch of the career’ of my husband (a little black
pamphlet) which half suspects a remote drop of Gypsy blood in him.
There is no proof that this was ever the case; but there is no question
that he showed many of their peculiarities in appearance, disposition,
and speech--speaking Romany like themselves. Nor did we ever enter a
Gypsy camp without their claiming him: ‘What are you doing with a black
coat on?’ they would say; ‘why don’t you join us and be our King?’”[2]

Whether the affinity was one of blood or of nature does not greatly
matter; in either case it lends a special interest to Burton’s study of
the gypsy.

Of _El Islam; or, The Rank of Muhammadanism among the Religions of
the World_ there is little to be said. It is one of the oldest of the
Burton MSS.; and though it bears no date, from internal evidence I
judge it to have been written soon after his famous pilgrimage to Mecca
in 1853. It is, in fact, contemporary with his poem _The Kasîdah_,
though I know not why the poem was published and the essay withheld.
Probably Burton contemplated writing more fully on the subject.
Muhammadanism in its highest aspect always attracted him. So long
ago as 1848 we find him preparing for his Mecca pilgrimage, not only
by learning the Koran and practising rites and ceremonies, but by “a
sympathetic study of Sufi-ism, the Gnosticism of El Islam, which would
raise me high above the rank of a mere Muslim.”[3] Lady Burton writes:
“This stuck to him off and on all his life”; and, it may be added, gave
a colour to his writings. Since Burton wrote this essay (now published
for the first time) a change has taken place among thinking men in the
estimate of El Islam among the religions of the world. Writers like
Lane Poole, Isaac Taylor, and Bosworth Smith, to name no others, have
cleared away many misconceptions concerning the “Saving Faith,” and
have discussed its merits as a humanizing creed. But the testimony of
a man like Burton, who by personal observation studied thoroughly the
“inner life of the Muslim,” who absolutely lived the life of an Arab
pilgrim, and penetrated to the Holy of Holies, of necessity carries
peculiar weight.

I should like to say a few words concerning the author’s MSS. So many
conflicting rumours have appeared with reference to the late Sir
Richard Burton’s MSS., that it is well to state that these are here
reproduced practically as they left the author’s hands.[4] It has
been my endeavour to avoid over-editing, and to interfere as little
as possible with the original text. Hence editorial notes, always
in square brackets, are sparingly introduced. It has not been found
necessary to make any verbal changes of importance. But the case is
different with the spelling of proper names, which were left in such
a chaotic condition that a revision was found indispensable, so as
to reduce them to some measure of uniformity. The variants were so
many and the MS. so difficult to decipher, that I am fain to crave
indulgence for my performance of this somewhat troublesome task.

In conclusion, I will only add that it has been my endeavour to give a
full and accurate presentment of these hitherto unpublished MSS. There
are more to follow; but these form a good sample of the work of the
famous Oriental traveller in fields which he made peculiarly his own.
They are eminently characteristic of the man. They give glimpses of him
once more as a bold and original thinker, a profound student of men
and things, as a rare genius, if a wayward one, and as one of the most
remarkable personalities of our day and generation.

                                                          W. H. WILKINS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] January, 1891.

[2] Lady Burton’s life of Her Husband, Vol. I., p. 252.

[3] Burton’s _Reminiscences_, written for Mr. Hitchman in 1888.

[4] In the case of the Appendix on Human Sacrifice among the Sephardím
or Eastern Jews and the murder of Padre Tomaso, I have (as before
stated) preferred to hold it over to publishing it in a mutilated form.



CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                            PAGE

  PREFACE                                                             v

  CONTENTS                                                         xvii


  I. THE JEW

    I. GENERAL OPINION OF THE JEW                                     3

    II. OPINION OF THE JEW IN ENGLAND                                20

    III. THE JEW OF THE HOLY LAND AND HIS DESTINY                    46

    IV. THE JEW AND THE TALMUD                                       72

    V. THE CONTINUITY OF TRADITION IN THE EAST                      115


  II. THE GYPSY

    Part I. NOTES ON MODERN STUDIES OF “CHINGANOLOGY”

      I. THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GYPSIES                       136

      II. THE CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD          144

      III. A REVIEW OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD’S REVIEWS                 157

        § 1. Preliminaries                                          157

        § 2. “Derniers Travaux, etc.”                               172

        § 3. “Origines, etc.”                                       183

        § 4. “Notes et Questions, etc.,” “Sur le mot Zagaie, etc.”  197

    Part II. TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE GYPSIES AND THE JATS

      IV. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE GYPSY IN EUROPE                  202

      V. THE GYPSY IN ASIA                                          211

        § 1. The Panjabi Jats                                       211

        § 2. The Jats of Belochistan                                215

        § 3. The Gypsies of Persia                                  217

        § 4. The Gypsies of Syria                                   219

        § 5. The Gypsies of the Haurán, South-Eastern Syria         228

        § 6. The Gypsies of Damascus                                231

      VI. THE GYPSY IN AFRICA                                       233

        § 1. The Egyptian Ghajar or Ghagar                          233

        § 2. The Gzane of Algeria and Morocco                       258

        § 3. The Gypsies in Inner Africa                            261

      VII. THE GYPSY IN EUROPE                                      263

        § 1. The Gypsy in Hungary                                   263

        § 2. The Gypsies of Spain                                   269

      VIII. THE GYPSY IN AMERICA                                    282

        The Gypsies of the Brazil                                   282


  III. EL ISLAM
  OR
  THE RANK OF MUHAMMADANISM AMONG THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD

    EL ISLAM                                                        289


  INDEX                                                             347

  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE



I.  THE JEW



CHAPTER I

GENERAL OPINION OF THE JEW


The history of the Jew as well as his physiological aspect are subjects
which still remain to be considered and carefully to be worked out from
an Aryan point of view. We have of late years seen books in plenty
upon points of detail: let us particularize _The Physical History of
the Jewish Race_, by Dr. Josiah Clark Nott[5] (Charleston, 1850); _Le
Juif_, par le Chevalier Geargenot des Monceseaux (Paris: Henri Plon,
1871); and _Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic
Writers of Antiquity: being a Collection of Statements and Opinions
translated from the Works of Greek and Latin Heathen Authors previous
to A.D. 500_, by John Gill (London: Longmans, 1872). But in these, as
in other works, we find wanting a practical and personal familiarity
with the subject, nor can we be surprised at its absence. It is
generally assumed that at the present moment there are six millions
of Jews scattered over the face of the earth. Some have exaggerated
the total to nine millions and a half; but even the former figure is a
greater number, says M. Crémieux, than the nation could boast of at any
other period of its history, ancient or modern.[6] Throughout the world
also the race increases with such marvellous rapidity as a rule, which
admits of few exceptions, that philosophical inquirers are beginning
to ask whether this immense fecundity, taken in connexion with the
exceptionally healthy and vigorous physique of the race, its ubiquity
and its cosmopolitanism, does not point to a remarkable career in times
to come.

The ethnologist and the student of general history are urgently invited
to consider the annals and the physical and intellectual aspects of
the children of Israel, perhaps the most interesting subject that
can occupy their attention. The Jew, like the Gypsy, stands alone,
isolated by character, if not by blessing. Traditionally, or rather
according to its own tradition, the oldest family on earth, it is at
the same time that which possesses the most abundant vitality. Its
indestructible and irrepressible life-power enables this nation without
a country to maintain an undying nationality and to nourish a sentiment
of caste with a strength and a pertinacity unparalleled in the annals
of patriotism. The people that drove the Jews from Judæa, the empires
which effaced the kingdoms of Israel and Judah from the map of the
world, have utterly perished. The descendants of the conquering Romans
are undistinguishable from the rest of mankind. But, eighteen hundred
years after the Fall of Jerusalem, the dispersed Jewish people have a
distinct existence, are a power in every European capital, conduct the
financial operations of nations and governments, and are to be found
wherever civilization has extended and commerce has penetrated; in
fact, it has made all the world its home.

One obstacle to a matured and detailed ethnological study of the Jew
is the difficulty of becoming familiar with a people scattered over
the two hemispheres. Though the race is one, the two great factors
blood and climate have shown it to be anything but immutable, either in
physique or in character. Compare, for instance, the two extremes--the
Tatar-faced Karaïte of the Crimea with the Semitic features of Morocco,
the blond lovelocks of Aden and the fiery ringlets of Germany with the
greasy, black hair of Houndsditch. And as bodily form differs greatly,
there is perhaps a still greater distinction in mental characteristics:
we can hardly believe the peaceful and industrious Dutch Jew a brother
of the fanatic and ferocious Hebrew who haunts the rugged Highlands of
Safed in the Holy Land. Yet though these differences constitute almost
a series of sub-races, there is one essentially great quality which
cements and combines the whole house of Israel.

The vigour, the vital force, and the mental capacity of other peoples
are found to improve by intermixture; the more composite their
character, the greater their strength and energy. But for generation
after generation the Jews have preserved, in marriage at least, the
purity of their blood. In countries where they form but a small
percentage of the population the range of choice must necessarily be
very limited, and from the very beginning of his history the Jew, like
his half-brother the Arab, always married, or was expected to marry,
his first cousin. A well-known traveller of the present day has proved
that this can be done with impunity only by unmixed races of men, and
that the larger the amount of mixture in blood the greater will be the
amount of deformity in physique and morale to be expected from the
offspring. Consanguineous marriages are dangerous in England, and far
more dangerous, as De Hone has proved, in Massachusetts. Yet the kings
of Persia intermarried with their sisters, and the Samaritan branch of
the Jews is so closely connected that first cousins are almost sisters.

Physically and mentally the Jewish man and woman are equal in all
respects to their Gentile neighbours, and in some particulars are
superior to them. The women of the better class are strongly and
symmetrically shaped; and although their beauty of feature is not that
admired by the Christian eye, debility and deformity are exceptionally
rare. In grace of form and in charm of manner they are far superior
to their husbands and brothers, and indeed this everywhere appears to
be a sub-characteristic racial feature. They are nowhere remarkably
distinguished for chastity, and in some places, Morocco for instance,
their immorality is proverbial. Their grand physique does not age
like that of the natives of the strange countries which they colonize
and where Europeans readily degenerate, they preserve youth for ten
years longer than their rivals, they become mothers immediately after
puberty, and they bear children to a far later age. Their customs
allow them to limit the family, not by deleterious drugs and dangerous
operations, but by the simple process of prolonging the period of
lactation, and barrenness is rare amongst them as in the days when it
was looked upon as a curse. There is scarcely any part of the habitable
globe, from the Highlands of Abyssinia to the Lowlands of Jamaica,
in which the Jewish people cannot be acclimatized more readily and
more rapidly than the other races of Europe--also the result of blood
comparatively free from that intermixture which brings forward the
inherent defects of both parents.

The Jews also enjoy a comparative immunity from various forms of
disease which are the scourge of other races. Pulmonary and scrofulous
complaints are rare amongst them; leprosy and elephantiasis are almost
extinct; and despite their impurity in person and the exceptional
filth of their dwelling-places, they are less liable to be swept away
by cholera and plague than the natives of the countries which are
habitually ravaged by those epidemics. They seldom suffer from the
usual infectious results, even where the women are so unchaste that
honour seems as unknown to them as honesty to the men.

Physiologists have asked, How is this phenomenon to be accounted for?
Why is the duration of life greater among the Jews than among the
other races of Europe? Is it the result of superior organization or
of obedience to the ceremonial law? The researches of those who have
made these questions their special study supply but one satisfactory or
sufficient answer, and it may be summed up in six words--a prodigious
superiority of vital power. And all the laws attributed to the
theistic secularism of Moses were issued with one object--namely, that
of hardening and tempering the race to an extent which even Sparta
ignored. The ancient Jew was more than half a Bedawin, and not being an
equestrian race his annual journeys to and from Jerusalem were mostly
made on foot. His diet was carefully regulated, and his year was a
succession of fasts and feasts, as indeed it is now, but not to such an
extent as formerly. The results were simply the destruction of all the
weaklings and the survival of the fittest.

Thrice during the year, by order of the Torah (Deut. xvi. 16)--namely
(1) in the Passover, or feast of unleavened bread during the first
ecclesiastical and the seventh civil month; (2) at Pentecost, or
Shebaoth (weeks), the feast of the wheat harvest in the third or the
ninth month; and (3) at the Feast of Tabernacles, or the ingathering
of the harvest in the seventh or the first month--the Jew of old was
religiously commanded to appear before the Lord. He was bound to leave
his home, which might be distant a hundred and fifty miles, and travel
up to Jerusalem, where he led a camp life like his half-brothers in
the Desert. This semi-nomad life was combined with a quasi-ascetic
condition produced by the frequency and the severity of his fasts and
by the austerities attending upon making ready for the Sabbath, that is
to say, the preparations of Friday evening--some religious men even in
the present age suffer nothing to pass their lips for seven consecutive
days and nights.[7] This afflicting the soul, as it is called, served
to breed a race equally hard and hardy in frame and mind. It embodied
to perfection the idea of the sacrifice of personal will. Add to this
the barbarous and ferocious nature of their punishments, amongst
which stoning by the congregation is perhaps the most classical, and
the perpetual bloodshed in the Temple, which must have suggested a
butcher’s shambles.

Again, the history and traditions, the faith and practice of the Jew
ever placed before his eyes the absolute and immeasurable superiority
of his own caste, the “Peculiar People, the Kingdom of Priests, the
Holy Nation.” This exaltation justified the Hebrew in treating his
brother-men as heathens barely worthy of the title of human. “Lo,
the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the
nations”--an unfriendly separation and an estrangement between man and
man equally injurious to the welfare of Jew and Gentile. It grew a rank
crop of hideous crimes committed in the fair name of religion--what
nation but the Hebrew could exult over a Jephthah who “did with his
daughter according to his own,” that is, burnt her to death before the
Lord? At the same time it inculcated a rare humanity amongst its own
members unknown to all other peoples of antiquity: for instance, it
allowed the coward to retire from the field before battle, and, strange
to say, it inculcated the very highest of moral dogmas. In 250 B.C.
Sochæus, and after him the Pharisees, according to Josephus, taught
that God should be served, not for gain, but for love and gratitude:
hence his follower Sadík forbade the looking forward to futurity, even
as Moses had neglected the doctrine with studious care. Even in the
present age of the world such denegation of egotism would be a higher
law.

All these specialities in combination urged the Jews to dare and to do
everything against all who were not of their own blood. The inevitable
conclusion of such a policy was that eventually they came into
collision with all around them; that they failed in the unequal combat
with pagan Rome and early Christianity; that they lost the birthplace
of their nationality, and were scattered far and wide over the surface
of the earth. And what has happened once may happen again.

The Greeks of earlier days, who like the Hebrews had but one faith
and one tongue, also met periodically as a single family at Delphi,
the centre of their racial area. Thus that gifted people without any
inspiration effectually combined with grandeur in the worship of the
gods the law of harmony which should preside over human society. But
the Greeks were a sensuous and a joyous race, walking under the free
heavens in the glorious lights of poetry, of art, and of beauty, and
could not fail to realize the truth that society based upon reciprocal
benevolence means civilization and the highest stage of human
society--communion with the world.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Boudin, the eminent physiologist and medical writer, remarks
that the Jew is governed by statistical laws of birth, sickness, and
mortality completely different from those which rule the peoples
amongst whom he lives. This assertion is confirmed by the testimony of
history. During the Middle Ages, when the unclean capitals of Europe
and Asia were periodically devastated by the plague, the angel of death
passed by the houses of the oppressed and despised Jews, although they
were condemned by local regulations to occupy the worst quarters of the
cities. In speaking of the pestilence of A.D. 1345, Tschudi says that
it nowhere attacked the Jews. Frascator mentions that they completely
escaped the typhus epidemic in A.D. 1505; they were untouched by the
intermittent fevers which reigned in Rome in A.D. 1691; they were not
subject to the dysentery which was so fatal at Nimeguen in A.D. 1736;
and both in 1832 and 1849 it is stated upon excellent authority that
they enjoyed comparative exemption from the cholera in London, although
during the last-named year the city numbered nearly thirteen thousand
victims.[8]

Not less curious are the statistics showing the natural aptitude of
the Jewish people, at once so national in their sentiments and so
cosmopolitan in their tendencies, for universal acclimatization. The
Jew and the Christian will emigrate to a British or a French colony
from the same birthplace; and while, owing to the uncongenial climate,
the Christian settler with his family eventually dies out, the Jewish
settler increases and multiplies. In Algeria, for example, the French
colonies would become extinct in a very short process of time were it
not for the steady influx of immigrants, whereas the Jew takes deep
root and throws out vigorous branches.

With respect to the superior longevity of the Jews, German sources
supply some interesting particulars. Dr. W. C. de Neufville,[9] of
Frankfort, by the collection and collation of an immense mass of
statistics, has demonstrated the following facts:

  1. One-fourth of Christian populations dies at the mean age of 6
      years 11 months.

  2. One-fourth of Jewish populations dies at the mean age of 28 years
      3 months.

  3. One-half of Christian populations dies at the mean age of 36
      years 6 months.

  4. One-half of Jewish populations dies at the mean age of 53 years 1
      month.

  5. Three-fourths of Christian populations die at the mean age of 59
      years 10 months.

  6. Three-fourths of Jewish populations die at the mean age of 71
      years.

It is found that in Prussia the annual mortality among the Jews is 1·61
per cent, to 2·00 among the rest of the population. The annual rate
of increase with the former is 1·73 per cent.; with the latter only
1·36.[10] In Frankfort the mean duration of human life is 36 years 11
months among the Christian population, and 46 years 9 months among the
Jewish.

I will now quote at full length the favourable verdict usually offered
in the case of the Hebrews by the writers of Europe:

“If we trace the history of the Israelitish race from the destruction
of Jerusalem to the time at which the prevalence of a more enlightened
public opinion caused to be effaced from the Statute Books of European
nations the barbarous and cruel enactments against the Jews, adopted
in an epoch when bigotry, brutality, and persecution were rampant, we
shall be constrained to admit that there has been something little
less than miraculous in the preservation of this people from utter
extermination. Basnage[11] (_Histoire des Juifs_) calculates that
1,338,460 Jews perished by fire and sword, famine and sickness, at and
after the siege of the Holy City. Subsequently a host of unfortunate
exiles became the objects of bitter and unrelenting persecution,
fanaticism, and tyranny in every country throughout Christendom. During
the two years which preceded their final expulsion from Judæa, 580,000
Jews were slaughtered by the Romans; and the gradual dispersion of
the rest over the face of Europe was the prelude for the perpetration
upon them by ‘Christians’ of a series of atrocities almost unequalled
for merciless savagery. The functions they discharged in mediæval
society were, in reality, of the most valuable kind; but so dense
was the ignorance, and so inveterate were the prejudices of the age,
that towards the close of the thirteenth century upwards of 13,000
Israelites were banished from England in one day; just as two hundred
years later 500,000 were expelled from Spain, 150,000 from Portugal,
and an indefinite number were cast out of France. For a period of three
centuries successive sovereigns refused to accord permission to the
Jews to worship Almighty God within the English realm; nor was it until
the Protectorate of Cromwell that a synagogue was allowed to be erected
in London.

“In works of fiction, in the drama, and in daily life the name of
Jew has become a byword and a reproach, and an explanation of this
is to be sought for rather in the malignity of religious prejudice
than in the actual conduct of the people who have been visited with
so much opprobrium. Their virtues are their own, but their faults are
the fruit of eighteen centuries of outlawry and oppression. Under
such treatment archangels would have become depraved. In the history
of the whole world there is nothing which in any degree resembles
the systematic persecutions, the barbarous cruelties, the cowardly
insults, the debasing tyranny to which the Jewish race has been
exposed. That it was not degraded to the level of the African negroes,
or absolutely obliterated from the face of the earth, is only another
proof of its wonderful vitality and of the indestructible elasticity
of the national character.[12] In spite of all these centuries of
oppression and repression, its representatives are still found, not
merely among the monarchs of finance, but among the royalties and
aristocracies of genius. Every one must remember the passage in
_Coningsby_ in which Mr. Disraeli enumerates the illustrious Jews who
are occupying, or have occupied, the foremost rank in arts, letters,
statesmanship, and military science--Count Cantemir in Russia, Senor
Mendizelal in Spain, and Count Arnim in Prussia; Marshals Soult and
Massena, Professors Neander, Regius, Bearnary, and Wohl; the composers
Rossini, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer (not to mention Offenbach); Rachel
the actress; Pasta, Grisi, and Braham the vocalists, Spinoza the
philosopher, and Heine the poet; to which list he might have added the
names of some of the most distinguished of living French and English
celebrities.[13] And though we have forgotten Xapol and Gondomar,
Yahuda Halevi, and Aviabron, alias Solomon ben Gabriel, few of us
can ignore the Rothschilds and Goldsmids, the Ricardos, Rouhers, and
Torlonias, now become household words in Europe.

 “That in all countries the Jews, on the other hand, should evince a
 preference for sordid pursuits, and follow them with an eagerness and
 tenacity worthy of employment in more generous and elevated callings,
 must also be admitted. William Abbott, in his outspoken and earnest
 but narrow-minded way, advanced this plea upon one occasion in the
 House of Commons, in resistance to a motion to relieve all persons
 professing the Jewish religion in England from the civil disabilities
 under which they then laboured. He was replied to by Macaulay in a
 speech as eloquent in terms as it was irresistible in logic.

 “‘Such, sir,’ said he, ‘has in every age been the reasoning of bigots.
 They never fail to plead, in justification of persecution, the vices
 which persecution has engendered. England has been to the Jews less
 than half a country, and we revile them because they do not feel for
 England more than a half patriotism. We treat them as slaves, and
 wonder that they do not regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean
 occupations, and then reproach them for not embracing honourable
 professions. We long forbade them to possess land, and we complain
 that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade. We shut them out from
 all the paths of ambition, and then we despise them for taking refuge
 in avarice. During many ages we have in all our dealings with them
 abused our immense superiority of force, and then we are disgusted
 because they have recourse to that cunning which is the natural and
 universal defence of the weak against the violence of the strong. But
 were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting, money-hoarding
 race? Nobody knows better than my honourable friend, the member for
 the University of Oxford, that there is nothing in their national
 character which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. He
 knows that in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as
 savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to
 Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the
 site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar
 palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their
 schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their
 natural philosophers, their historians and poets. What nation ever
 contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence
 and religion? And if, in the course of many centuries, the oppressed
 descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities
 of their fathers--if while excluded from the blessings of law and
 bound down under the yoke of slavery they have contracted some of
 the vices of outlaws and slaves, shall we consider this a matter of
 reproach to them? Shall we not rather consider it a matter of shame
 and remorse to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to
 them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till
 we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius
 among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism amongst the descendants of
 the Maccabees.’”

We have “done this,” and the results have stultified all this nicely
balanced rhetoric. And the following pages may suggest that our
European ancestors had other reasons for expelling the Jews than the
mere “bigotry” and “brutality” so unphilosophically ascribed to them by
Lord Macaulay. FOOTNOTES:

[5] [Dr. J. C. Nott, the well-known ethnologist.]

[6] The two great centres of Jewish population are, first, the northern
part of Africa between Morocco and Egypt, especially the Barbary
States, where they form the chief element of the town population, and
where a census is at present mere guesswork; they spread gradually
southwards, and since 1858 a trading colony has occupied Timbuctoo on
the Niger. The other families in Africa are the Falashas, or Black
Jews of Abyssinia, mere proselytes like those of Malabar, and a few
Europeans at the Cape of Good Hope. The second great centre is that
region of Europe which extends from the Lower Danube to the Baltic; and
here there are about four millions who occupy the middle class among
the Sclavonic nationalities, while in the whole of Western Europe there
are not a hundred and twenty thousand. Their descendants have followed
the path of European migrations to America, North and South, and to
Australia, where the large commercial towns enable them to multiply as
in the Old World, and much more rapidly than the Christian population.
The other outlying colonies are in Turkey, European as well as Asiatic,
although the Holy Land now contains but a small proportion of their
former numbers; in Yemen, especially at Sanaá and Aden, in Nejerán,
and other parts of Arabia; along the whole course of the Euphrates,
in Kurdistan, Persia, and India, especially in Malabar, where there
are white and black Jews; in China and in Cochin China, both colonies
being also found; and in the Turkoman countries. Here they inhabit the
four fortresses of Shahr-i-sabz, Kulab, Shamatan, and Urta Kurgan, with
about thirty small villages; they live in their own quarters, and,
except having to pay higher taxes, they are treated on an equal footing
with the other inhabitants.

[7] This terrible fast is called Ha-fraká. Old men have been known in
Syria and Palestine to endure it twice a year, in summer and in winter.
They sup on Saturday evening, and till the sunset of the next Saturday
they do not allow themselves to swallow even a drop of water or to
touch a pinch of snuff. The state of prostration towards the end of the
term is extreme, and the first thing done, when the time has passed, is
to place the patient in a warm bath. This is probably the severest fast
known to the world, unless it be rivalled by certain Hindu ascetics:
the Greek and Coptic Christians and the Muhammadans have nothing to
compare with it.

[8] This we gather from the reports of the General Board of Health on
the epidemic cholera. In 1832 only 4 deaths were recorded out of the
3,000 Portuguese Jews, and in 1849 amongst the 20,000 then inhabiting
London there were no more than 13, although the loss from cholera
amounted to 12,837. This gives a proportion of 0·6 per 1,000, whilst
the superintendent registrar assigns 1: 1,000 to Hampstead, 6: 1,000 to
Whitechapel, 7: 1,000 to the City of London, 19: 1,000 to Shoreditch,
and 29: 1,000 to Rotherhithe. [These figures are for the special
cholera year 1832. Since then the visitations have been much less
severe.]

[9] [The work referred to is _Lebensdauer und Todesursachen 22
verschiedener Stände_. Frankfort, 1855.]

[10] [These figures are for average years, and hence hold good now as
then.]

[11] [Author of the large history of the Jews in 5 vols. Rotterdam,
1707.]

[12] There is another parasitic race, also of pure blood, but
Indo-European, not Semitic, whose preservation appears almost as
“providential” as that of the Jews, and whose union is even more
exceptional because it is not bound either by revelation or indeed by
any form of faith--the Gypsy.

[13] Not to mention Wolff and Palgrave the travellers, and Monseigneur
Bauer, Père Hermann, and Père Marie de Ratisbonne, the converts.



CHAPTER II

OPINION OF THE JEW IN ENGLAND


Of all Europeans, the Englishman, who boasts of being a staunch friend
to the people “scattered and peeled,” and whose confident ignorance and
indiscriminate philanthropy are bestowed upon them equally with the
African negro, knows least of the customs and habits of his _protégés_,
and especially of those of Jews in foreign countries. The neglect of
things near to us must be the reason why we know so little of the inner
life of Jewry: there are, however, other concomitant causes.

In our native land the Hebrew lives protected, and honoured, in
fact, as one of ourselves. We visit him, we dine with him, and
we see him at all times and places, except perhaps at the Sunday
service. We should enjoy his society but for a certain coarseness of
manner, and especially an offensive familiarity, which seems almost
peculiar to him. We marvel at his talents, and we are struck by the
adaptability and by the universality of his genius. We admire his
patience, his steadfastness, and his courage, his military prowess,
and his successful career in every post and profession--Statesman and
Senior Wrangler, Poet and Literato, Jurist, Surgeon, and Physician,
Capitalist, Financier, and Merchant, Philosopher and Engineer, in fact
in everything that man can be. When we compare the Semitic Premier with
his Anglo-Saxon rival, it is much to the advantage of the former: while
jesting about the “Asian mystery,” we cannot but feel that there is
something in the Asiatic which we do not expect, which eludes our ken,
which goes beyond us.

Those familiar with the annals of old families in England are aware
of the extent to which they have been mixed with Jewish blood, even
from the days when religious prejudice is mistakenly represented to
have been most malign. Indeed, of late centuries our nation has never
prided itself, like the Portuguese and the Iberians generally, in
preserving its blood “pure and free from taint of Jew and Infidel.”
The cross perpetually reappears in outward form as well as in mental
quality. Here and there an old country house produces a scion which
to all appearance is more Jewish than the Jews themselves. A peculiar
characteristic of the blood is an extreme fondness for show, for
colour, for splendour and magnificence in general. The rich Jew must
display his wealth; like the Parsee, he makes and spends whilst
his rivals the Greek and the Armenian make and hoard. In certain
continental cities where he now reigns supreme he renders society
impossible to the Christian. The Messrs. G. Muir Mackenzie and O. P.
Irby--_The Turks, the Greeks, and the Slavons_ (London: Bell & Daldy,
1867)--will show how at Salonika[14] the French Consul Marquis de
---- could not join in any of the festivities. The dinner-table was
not respected unless it glistened with gold and silver plate borrowed
and lent for the occasion. His wife could not appear without a new
dress on every occasion, and therefore she stayed at home. A toilette
from Paris twice a week not only ministers to the womanly enjoyment
of the wearer, and to the sensuous pleasures of the beholders, but
also shows that the house is wealthy and that the firm has spare money
to throw away. It is, in fact, an advertisement of the most refined
description. Ladies meeting in parties of three and four over what our
grandmothers called “a dish of tea” must appear _décolletées_ and in
diamonds. The _rivière_ must disfigure the beautiful neck and bosom of
the bride. At the theatre those boxes are most valued where the light
falls strongest upon the precious stones, and where costly textures and
valuable laces stand out to the greatest advantage. And behind this
splendour of show lies cunning of a high order. The grand liveries are
used once a week upon Madame’s “day”; at other times the lackeys are
_en déshabille_. The costly carriage horses work till noon in carts and
drays transporting the _irritamenta malorum_ which support the equipage
of the afternoon. And so in everything. The Hebrew race is so marked in
its characteristics that it has ever been the theme of over-praise or
of undue blame, like those individuals concerning whom society cannot
be neutral; and of late years the transitions of public opinion which
usually moves slowly have been comically abrupt.

The Jew of popular English fiction is no longer _Moshesh_, a wretch who
believes in one God and in Shent-per-Shent as his profit, whose eyes,
unlike those of Banquo, are brimming full with “speculation.” The Fagin
of young Dickens only a quarter of a century ago has now become the
“gentle Jew Riah” of old Dickens, a being remarkable for resignation
and quiet dignity, a living reproach to the Christian heathenry that
dwells about him. The great feminine actresses of the world, we are
told by a charming authoress, are all Jewesses. _Tancred; or, the New
Crusade,_ to mention nothing of meaner note, teaches us to admire and
love the modern “Roses of Sharon,” those exquisite visions that are
read to rest by attendants with silver lamps, and who talk history,
philosophy, and theology with the warmth of womanly enthusiasm,
tempered by the pure belief of a bishop of the Church of England, the
learning of a German professor, and the grace of Madame Recamier.
Miriam has become, in fact, a pet heroine with novel writers and novel
readers, and thrice happy is the fascinating young Christian who, like
“that boy of Norcott’s,” despite his manifold Christian disabilities,
can win her hand and heart.

Of the middle and lower classes of Jews the Englishman only hears
that they are industrious, abstinent, and comparatively cleanly in
person; decent, hospitable, and as strict in keeping the Sabbath as
the strictest Sabbatarians could desire--perhaps, if he knew all, he
would not desire so much. He is told that they are wondrous charitable
in their dealings with those of the same faith, always provided that
some mite of a religious difference does not grow to mountain size. The
papers inform him how munificent and judicious is their distribution
of alms, how excellent are their arrangements for the support of their
paupers, who are never exposed to the horrors of the parish and the
poor-house, and who are maintained by their co-religionists, though
numbering in London at least 16·50 per cent. out of a total exceeding
thirty thousand souls.[15] And he everywhere reads of Charities,
public, private, and congregational; of Hospitals and Almshouses; of
Orphanages, Philanthropic Institutions; of Pensioners’ and Widows’
Homes; Friendly Societies; of Doles of Bread and Coal and Raiment;
of Lying-in Houses and Infant Asylums; of Burial Societies, male
and female; of arrangements for supplying godfathers and godmothers
managed by Benevolent Societies, Boards, Institutions, Committees,
and Consistories. Like their charities, the educational system may be
divided into three heads: Schools, public and private; Rabbinical and
Theological Institutions; and Literary and Scientific Associations.

He--the ordinary Englishman--may be dimly conscious that the Jew is
the one great exception to the general curse upon the sons of Adam,
and that he alone eats bread, not in the sweat of his own face, but
in the sweat of his neighbour’s face--like the German cuckoo, who
does not colonize, but establishes himself in the colonies of other
natives. He has perhaps been told that all the world over the Jew
spurns the honest toil of the peasant and the day labourer; that in
the new Jewry of Houndsditch and Petticoat Lane, in the Marais, in
the Ghetto, in the Juden Strasse, and in the Hárat el Yahúd (Jewish
quarters) of Mussulman cities, his sole business is _quocumque modo
rem--sordid gains_--especially by money-lending, and by usury, which
may not be practised upon a fellow Jew, but which, with the cleanest of
consciences, is applied to the ruin of the Gentile. He has heard that
where Saxon and Celt ply pick and pan, the Hebrew broker and pedlar
buy up their gains and grow rich where the working-men starve in the
midst of gold. He sees that the “Chosen People” will swarm over the
world from California to Australia, wherever greed of gain induces them
to travel. “To my mind,” says a popular writer, “there are few things
so admirable and wonderful in this life as the ‘getting on,’ as it is
vulgarly called, of the Hebrew race. For one of us who, by means of
infinite wriggling, panting, toiling, struggling, and hanging on by
his eyebrows, so to speak, to opportunity, ambitious to emerge from
obscurity, and ascend to the topmost round of the ladder, there seems
to be at least five hundred Caucasian Arabs who attain the desired
altitude; ay, and who manage to avoid turning giddy and toppling over.
Most Jews seem to rise, and the instances of a few going ‘to the
utter bad,’ as the phrase runs, seem equally as rare. How often your
successful Nazarene comes to grief! At the moment you think him Lord
of All he is Master of Nothing.... Jews appear to keep what they have
gotten; and, what is better, to get more, and keep _that_ too. They
are not much given, I fancy, to experience the pangs of remorse; and
I cannot well imagine a mad Jew. It must be something awful. On the
whole, looking at the vast number of Christians I have known who from
splendour have subsided into beggary, and the vast number of Hebrews
I have watched advancing, not from mendicity--a Jew never begs, save
from one of his own tribe, and then I suppose the transaction is more
of the nature of a friendly loan, to be repaid with interest when
brighter days arrive--but from extreme indigence to wealth and station,
I incline to the opinion that Gentiles have a natural alacrity in
sinking--look how heavy I can be--but that the Chosen People have as
natural a tendency towards buoyancy. That young man with the banner
in Mr. Longfellow’s ballad was, depend upon it, an Israelite of the
Israelites; only I think the poet was wrong, as poets generally are, in
his climax. The young man was not frozen to death. He made an immense
fortune at the top of Mont Blanc by selling ‘Excelsior’ penny ices.”

The secret of this “getting on” is known to every expert. The Jewish
boy begins from his earliest days with changing a few sovereigns,
and he pursues the path of lucre till the tomb opens to receive him.
He is utterly single-minded in this point; he has but one idea, and
therefore he must succeed. Who does not remember the retort of the
Jewish capitalist to the Christian statesman who, impertinently enough,
advised him to teach his children something beyond mere trade? “My
first wish,” answered the Hebrew, “is to see my boys become good men of
business; beyond that--nothing!”

The average Englishman cannot help observing with Cobbett, and
despite Lord Macaulay, that the callings which the lower orders of
Jews especially prefer are those held mean or dishonourable by other
men, such as demoralizing usury, receiving stolen goods, buying up
old clothes, keeping gambling-houses and betting-cribs, dealing in a
literature calculated to pervert the mind of youth; combining, as a
person--afterwards sent to Newgate--lately did, the trade of a cosmetic
artist with the calling of a procuress, and supplying the agapemonæ
of the world,[16] while occasionally producing a sharp jockey or a
hard-hitting prize-fighter. He is not ignorant of their prodigious
trickery, of their immense and abnormal powers of lying--the “trifle
tongue,” as they picturesquely call it--and their subtle art of winning
their object by roundabout ways. He cannot mistake their physical
cowardice, but he remembers that the Jewish officers, once so numerous
in the French army, were as brave as their Christian brethren; and
again he recognizes the fact that lying and cowardice long continue to
be the effects of oppression. He smiles at their intense love of public
amusements, and their excessive fondness for display, evinced by tawdry
finery and mosaic gold.

Knowing this, however, he supposes himself to know the worst. He has
heard little of the excessive optimism of the Jew, the [Greek: παντα
καλα λιαν: panta kala lian], so strongly opposed to Christianity, the
“religion of sorrow.” He knows nothing of the immense passions and
pugnacity, the eagerness and tenacity of Lutheran rancour displayed
against all who differ from some minutiæ of oral law. He ignores
the over-weening, narrow-minded pride of caste which makes the Jew
“destined by God to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”--as
one of their own race, Rabbi Ascher (initiator of youth), even now
repeats.[17] He cannot realize the fact that the ferocity and terrible
destructiveness which characterize the Jew and his literature, from
the days of the Prophets to those of the Talmudists, are present in
his civilized neighbour, whom he considers to be one of the best of
men--a sleeping lion, it is true, but ready to awake upon the first
occasion. And he is ignorant of the Eastern Jews’ love of mysticism
and symbolism, their various horrible and disgusting superstitions,
and their devotion to magical charms and occult arts which lead to a
variety of abominations.

This ignorance produces weak outbursts of lamentations that the Hebrews
“still cling with obstinate persistence to a hopeless hope,” Hence we
read in the pages of a modern traveller--_The Rob Roy on the Jordan_,
p. 274, by J. MacGregor, M.A. (London: Murray, 1869): “Here, as well
as some twenty years ago, I heard men in Palestine call their fellows
‘Jew’ as the lowest of all possible words of abuse. When we recollect
that the Jews, in this very land of their own, were once the choice
people of the world; that now through the whole earth, among the
richest, the bravest, the cleverest, the fairest, the best at music
and song, at poetry and painting, at art and science and literature,
at education, philanthropy, statesmanship, war, commerce, and finance,
in every sphere of life are Jews,--we may well remember the word of
prophecy which told us long ago that the name of Jew would be a ‘byword
and a reproach,’ even in the Jews’ own land.” It is true that, even
in the Portuguese colonies, where the Jew is comparatively unknown,
his name is worse than at Jerusalem, Bagdad, and Damascus; whilst
“Judear”--to play the Jew--signifies the being capable of any villainy.
But how long will prophecy prove true? In the coast towns of Morocco, a
few years have sufficed to raise the Hebrew from the lowest of stations
to equality with, and even superiority over, his Mussulman cousin. The
Jew may ere long make the Gentile a “byword and a reproach.”

But the English world never hears the fact that the Jew of Africa,
of Arabia, of Kurdistan, of Persia, and of Western Asia generally,
is still the Jew “cunning and fierce” of the thirteenth and the
fourteenth centuries in Europe; that he is the Jew of the Talmud,
of Shammai, and of Rabbi Shalomon Jarchi, not of the Pentateuch, of
Hillel, and of Gamaliel; that he sympathizes, not with those staunch
old conservatives and rationalists, the Sadducees, now gone for ever,
nor with Ezra and the Priests, the Levites and the Nethiním--men of
the Great Synagogue--nor with the ascetic Essenes, prototypes of
Christian monkery; but with the Pharisees, the Separatists, and the
Puritans of his faith, with the Captains, the Fanatics, the Zealots,
the Sicarii, the Swordsmen and the Brigands of John of Giscala, of
Eleazar son of Ananias, and of those who worked all the civil horrors
of our first century. Some distant or adventurous journey of Sir Moses
Montefiore[18] or other philanthropists, duly published with packed
and partial comments in the papers of Europe, reveals to the lazy
comprehension of the man of refinement that the Hebrew in many parts
of the semi-civilized world is still the object of suspicion, fear,
and abhorrence. He attributes the persecutions, the _avarice_, or the
massacre to the pleasures of plunder, to the barbarous bigotry, and to
the cruel fanaticism of bloodthirsty and cruel races, who still look
upon the present with the eyes of the past, and who have seized an
opportunity to glut their lust of spoil or to wreak an obsolete revenge
because some eighteen centuries and three-quarters ago “an aristocratic
and unpopular high priest, whom the people afterwards rose upon and
murdered, had for political reasons crucified our Lord,” or because in
A.D. 729[19] a heroic Jewess of Khaibar poisoned a shoulder of lamb
with the object of trying by a crucial test whether Muhammad was the
Prophet of Allah, or merely the Sheikh of Arab pillagers, the worthy
_confrère_ of Músailamah the Liar.

We do not waste time upon thought or inquiry whether the persecution,
the _avarice_, or the massacre may not be the direct result of some
intolerable wrong, of some horrible suspicion which has gradually
assumed the form of certainty, and which calls for the supreme judgment
of the sword; we do not reason that the cause which from ancient times
has confined the Jew to Ghettos and to certain quarters in all great
continental cities resulted, not only from his naturally preferring
the society of his co-religionists, but also from the fact that his
Christian neighbours found it advisable to consult by such means their
own safety and that of their families. The disappearance of children
was talked of at Rome and in all the capitals of Italy even throughout
the early part of the present century, when constitutional rule and the
new police were unknown, as freely and frequently as at Salonika, at
Smyrna, and in all the cities of the Levant during the year of grace
1873.

Again, we hardly reflect that, as intolerance begets intolerance and
injury breeds injury, a trampled and degraded race will ever turn
when it can upon the oppressor, and that the revenge of the weak,
the slavish, and the cowardly will be the more certain, ruthless,
and terrible because it has a long score of insults and injuries to
reckon up. In the country towns of modern Persia, as in Turkey, the
Jew is popularly believed to make away with children. The Muhammadan
boy, meeting a Hebrew in the streets, will pluck his grey beard,
taunt him with the _Bú-e-Shimít_--the rank odour which is everywhere
supposed to characterize the race--tread upon his toes, and spit upon
his Jewish gabardine. In Turkey there are still places where he would
be expelled the Bazar with sticks and stones; others where every
outrage of language would be levelled against him, including Al Yahúd
Músairáj[20]--the Jew smells of the lamp--alluding to his free culinary
use of sesamum oil. A Jew passing through the square of the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem would infallibly be mobbed on all occasions,
and on certain fêtes would be torn to pieces; and the list of dangers
and insults which he incurs both from Muslims and Christians might be
indefinitely prolonged.

Can we wonder then if the persecutor, man or boy, disappear, should
opportunity offer such tempting punishment for their barbarous
fanaticism? And will not this supposition explain the Arabic proverb,
“Sup with the Jews and sleep at the Christians’,” and the fact that
every mother teaches her boy from earliest youth to avoid the Jewish
quarter, binding him by all manner of oaths? Finally, is it surprising
that amongst an ignorant and superstitious race of outcasts such
random acts and outbreaks of vengeance, pure and simple, should by
human perversity pass, after the course of ages, into a semi-religious
rite, and be justified by men whose persecution has frenzied them as
a protest and a memorial before the throne of the Most High against
the insults and injuries meted out by the Gentile to the children of
Abraham?

Shakespeare may not have drawn Shylock from a real character, but his
genius has embodied in the most lifelike form the Jew’s vengefulness
and the causes that nourished it. How many cities of the world there
are where he might hear these words: “Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not
a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed
with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same
winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and
if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Moreover, in the course of our reading, we Englishmen meet with nothing
which points to the existence of cruel murders and similar horrors in
any branch of the Hebrew race. Popular books like _The British Jew_
(Rev. John Mills. London: Hurlston & Stoneman, 1854), for instance,
are mostly written in the apologetic tone; they are advocates and
missionaries, not describers. They enumerate the duties and ceremonies
of the “strict, enlightened Israelite”--a powerful majority amongst
the thirty-five to forty thousand that have colonized the British
Islands--modified and transformed by the civilization of their
surroundings. They studiously avoid that part of the subject which
would be most interesting to the ethnologist, the various irregular
practices of the people, because they would not “crowd their pages
with the superstitions of the ignorant”; and they probably have not
defined to themselves the darker shades which the religious teaching
of later centuries has diffused over the Jewish mind, and which linger
even among the most advanced of modern communities. The well-known
volume of Dr. Alexander McCaul, _The Old Paths; or, a Comparison of
the Principles and Doctrines of Modern Judaism with the Religion of
Moses and the Prophets_ (London: Hubbard & Son, 1854), which has
been translated into almost every European language, reveals but
little, while professing to reveal much. It is written in a purely
apologetic spirit; and as it attacked the Talmud, but spared the Jew,
who, however, systematically destroys every copy, it has lost for the
general reader all its significance. The celebrated article upon the
Talmud first published in the _Quarterly Review_ (October, 1867),
and afterwards owned to by the late M. Emanuel Deutsch, who began by
denying the authorship, greatly surprised the _poco-curanti_ of Great
Britain. It was a triumph of special pleading. It studiously ignored
the fact that the Talmudic writers who flourished in the third and the
sixth centuries of our era had evidently consulted the writings of the
“School of Galilee,”[21] especially of the New Testament, apocryphal as
well as canonical. It artfully opened to the admiring eye of ignorance
a noble garden of time-honoured experience, a goodly parterre of racial
and social piety and benevolence, a paradise of religious wisdom, from
which a few transplanted shoots would suffice to enrich and adorn a
wilderness of rugged and neglected fields. It concealed with equal
skill the sinks and drains, the shallows and quagmires which everywhere
underlie the fair and flowery surface; and it withdrew attention from
the dark corners rank with poisonous weeds and overrun with trees
bearing deadly fruit. Such art of manipulation would readily pick
the Sermon on the Mount from the pages of the erotic poets of “the
East,” perhaps the most materialistic and the most corrupt which the
literature of the world has produced.

What then can the average Englishman, thus instructed, know about
the Hebrew at home? how much of the Hebrew abroad, especially in
Asia, in Africa, and even in Europe? How is he fully to comprehend
the reason why the name of Jew is still a byword and a reproach? or
why the scrupulous British official--the late Consul Brant, C.B.,
the historical Consul of Erzerum, who revived the trade of ancient
Trebizond--who never allowed himself to use profane language, applied
to Christians and Muslims the word “Jew” as the most insulting term
that can be levelled at man?

The following article appeared in the _Saturday Review_[22] as a
comment upon a “recent outbreak of Rumanian fanaticism against the Jews
at Ismail,” and explains at once the isolation and the great material
success of the children of Israel all the world over. I quote it _in
extenso_ as it shows the general opinion of educated Englishmen and
the unreality and shallowness of the treatment which views the world
through glasses of British home-make:

“There is no real difference between the Rumanian Jews and the Jews
of Galicia or Bohemia; nor can they in their turn be separated from
the Jews of Germany, of France, or of England. The dirty, greasy
usurers of Rumania are the humble brethren of the financiers of
London and Frankfort, and that the Jews are a great power in Europe
is incontestable. What are, it may be asked, the secrets of their
power? They are religion, the capacity for making money, and internal
union. A ceremonial, and therefore an exclusive religion, a religion
that binds together its members by rites that seem strange to the
rest of the world, has a strong hold upon those who are within the
fold. They are like the tenants of a beleaguered fort cut off from
the rest of mankind, and obliged to protect themselves and help each
other. But religion is not enough to raise a race into eminence. The
Jews and the Parsees are eminent, not only because they circumcise
their sons, or light fires on the tops of their houses, but because
they make money. The money they have gives them consequence; but it is
not only the money itself that does this; it is the qualities that go
to making money which raise them--the patience, the good sense, the
capacity for holding on when others are frightened, the daring to make
a stroke when the risk is sufficient to appal. And the Jews are not
only religious and rich; they are bound together by intimate ties. The
inner world of Judaism is that of a democracy. The millionaire never
dreams of despising, or failing to aid, his poorest and most degraded
brother. The kindness of Jews for Jews is unfailing, spontaneous, and
unaffected. The shabbiest hat-buyer or orange-seller of Houndsditch is
as sure of having the means provided for him of keeping the sacred
feast of the Passover as if he lived in a Piccadilly mansion. To
the eyes of the Jews even the most degraded of Jews do not seem so
degraded as they do in the eyes of the outer world. The poorest have
perhaps possessions which redeem them in the eyes of their brethren;
and many of the lowest, greasiest, and most unattractive Hebrews who
walk about the streets in search of old clothes or skins are known by
their co-religionists to be able to repeat by rote portions of the
sacred volumes by the hour at a time. To all these permanent causes of
Jewish eminence there must, however, be added one that has had only
time to develop itself since extreme bigotry has died away, and since
in Western Europe the Jews have been treated, first with contemptuous
toleration, then with cold respect, and, finally, when they are very,
very rich, with servile adoration.

“These people--so exclusive, so intensely national, so intimately
linked together--have shown the most astonishing aptitude for
identifying themselves with the several countries in which they have
cast their fortunes. An English Jew is an Englishman, admires English
habits and English education, makes an excellent magistrate, plays to
perfection the part of a squire, and even exercises discreetly the
power which, with its inexhaustible oddity, the English law gives him,
while it denies it to the members of the largest Christian sect, and
presents incumbents to livings so as to please the most fastidious
bishops. The French Jews were stout friends of France during the
war--served as volunteers in the defence of Paris, and opened their
purses to the national wants, and their houses to the suffering French.
The German Jews were as stout Germans in their turn; and in war, as
in peace, they are always ready to show themselves Germans as well as
Jews. It is the combination of the qualities of both nations that is
now raising the foremost of the German Jews to their high rank in the
world of wealth. In that world, to be a German is to be a trader whom
it is very hard to rival, to be a Jew is to be an operator whom it
is impossible to beat; but to be a German Jew is to be a prince and
captain among the people.

“In this way the Jews have managed to overcome much of the antipathy
which would naturally attach to men of an alien race and an alien
religion. The English Jew is not seen to be standing aloof from
England and Englishmen. But it is impossible there should not be some
sort of social barrier between the Jew and the Christian. They cannot
intermarry except for special political or other cogent reasons, and
it necessarily chills the kindness and intimacy of family intercourse
when all the young people know that friendship can never grow into
anything else. In order to overcome this obstacle many wealthy Jews
have chosen to abjure their religion and enrol their households in
the Christian communion. But the more high-minded and high-spirited
among them shrink from doing this, and accept, and even glory in, the
position into which they were born. Fortunately for himself and for
England, a kind friend determined the religion of Mr. Disraeli before
he was old enough to judge for himself, and in his maturer years he
has been able conscientiously to adopt what he terms the doctrines of
the School of Galilee. If they are not decoyed into Christianity by
their social aspirations, Jews are unassailable, for the most part, by
the force of either persecution or argument; and although there are
some conversions to be attributed to Christian reasoning or Christian
gold, they are probably counterbalanced by the accessions to Judaism
of Christian women who marry Jewish husbands. The Jews therefore
lead, and must lead, on the whole a family life marked by something
of reserve and isolation. But the disadvantages they have thus to
endure are not without their compensative advantages. Their family life
by being secluded has gained in warmth and dignity.[23] In very few
families is there so much thoughtfulness, consideration, parental and
fraternal affection, reverence for age, and care for the young as in
Jewish families. The women too have been ennobled, not degraded, by
being thrown on themselves and on their families for their sphere of
thought and action. They are almost always thoroughly instructed in
business, and capable of taking a part in great affairs; for it has
been the custom of their race to consider the wife the helpmate--the
sharer in every transaction that establishes the position or enhances
the comfort of the family. Leisure, activity of mind, and the desire
to hand on the torch of instruction from the women of one generation
to those of another, inspire Jewesses with a zeal for education, a
love of refinement, and a sympathy with art. Homes of the best type
are of course to be taken as the standard when it is inquired what are
the characteristics of a race as seen at its best; and European family
life has few things equal to show to the family life of the highest
type of Jews. Their isolation, again, makes most of the men liberal
and free from the prejudices of class, just as their connexion with
their dispersed brethren relieves them from the pressure of insular
narrowness. But, as Mr. Bright remarks, religious bigotry is slow to
die away altogether; and even in educated English society there are few
Christians who do not think themselves entitled to approach a Jew with
a sense of secret superiority. If a Jew is ostentatious or obtrudes his
wealth, if his women are loaded with jewellery, if he talks the slang
of the sporting world in order to show what a fine creature he is,
society is as right to put him down as to put down any Christian like
him. But the philanthropists who invited Mr. Bright to attend their
meeting may be profitably invited to search their own hearts, and ask
themselves whether they are quite free from that feeling that the best
Jew is never the equal of the worst Christian, which is at the root of
the Rumanian riots,[24] and which certainly is entirely out of keeping
with the tenets and teaching of the School of Galilee.”

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Here out of sixty thousand souls the Jews number forty thousand,
but to prevent taxation they have arranged with the Turkish authorities
never to exceed eleven thousand five hundred. [Since this was written
(1873) the whole population of Salonika has increased rapidly, and now
(1897) numbers 150,000, of whom about 60,000 are Jews, 30,000 Turks,
30,000 Serbs, 15,000 Greeks, and 4,000 Zinzers.]

[15] No religious census has lately been taken in England and Wales;
the above therefore is only a conjecture. In 1853 the Jews of Great
Britain were set down at 30,000; of these 25,000 were resident in
London, and 5,000 elsewhere. The yearly deaths were 560, which at the
average rate of mortality would give a maximum of 25,000. Of this
total, 5,000 belonged to the upper or educated class, 8,000 to the
middle orders, and 12,000 represented the lower ranks. [In 1890 the
Jews of Great Britain and Ireland were estimated at over 93,000, of
whom 67,500 were resident in London. It may be of interest to add that
in 1896 the entire Jewish population was calculated at 6,505,000,
thus distributed over the globe: Europe 5,500,000; Asia 260,000;
Africa 430,000; America 300,000; Australia 15,000. See A. H. Keane,
_Population, Races, and Languages of the World_, in the _Church
Missionary Atlas_, New (eighth) edition. London, 1896.]

[16] At this moment there is a traffic far fouler and more terrible
than any Coolie-hunting in African slave-export--extending from Lemberg
to India and China.

[17] The essential superiority of the Jew over Nakhrím, or strangers,
is carefully kept up by the Gavním, or luminaries, of the Jewish Law.
During the preparations for Sabbath one of the prayers is: “Blessed
art Thou, O Lord, who hast made distinction between things sacred and
profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and other nations.”
On the New Year’s Day (Rosh ha-Shanah) the housemaster says at supper:
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who didst select us from all other people,
and exalt us above all other nations, and sanctify us with Thy
commandments, ... for Thou didst select us, and sanctify us from all
other people.... Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel,”
etc. At the Passover they repeat the same, adding, “Blessed art Thou,
O Lord, the Sanctifier of Israel and the times.” During the Feast of
Pentecost they pray, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hast selected us
above all other people, and exalted us above all other nations, and
sanctified us with Thy commandments.... Our Lord is exalted--He is the
first and the last, He desired and chose us, and delivered to us the
Law.”

Such are a few of the passages which are still approved of by learned
and reverend Jews, “the stars of the evening twilight of their race.”
These pretensions are evidently misplaced at the end of the nineteenth
century. Their effects are remarkable upon the feeble brains of certain
Christians, who, in conversation and missionary matters, have been
thrown much in Jewish society, and who end by thoroughly believing all
these absurd claims. A Gentile writes about them: “In addressing the
posterity of the Patriarchs on such a theme [incredulity], well may I
avail myself of the words held sacred by their fellow-citizens, not
of their race, while I repeat the assertion that a Hebrew infidel--an
infidel amongst the ‘Israelites, to whom appertained the adoption,
and the glory, and the covenants,’ and to whom were committed the
oracles of God’--the only open eye of the world when all the rest of
mankind had darkness for their portion, or the light of dreams--is
indeed a frightful, a portentous phenomenon!” Yet such as they are they
number hundreds of thousands, and the spread of absolute infidelity is
enormously on the increase.

[18] The journey of this eminent philanthropist to Alexandria in
1840 was a very remarkable one, all things considered. In 1855 he
again visited “the East,” with the especial object of ameliorating
the condition of his co-religionists in the Holy Land; and it is a
favourite subject to conjecture how much, or how little, of the true
state of things he was allowed to know. He certainly learned nothing
from his Damascus host, the late Ishak Haim Farkhi, a Jew under French
protection. Nor is it believed that he gained much knowledge of the
true state of affairs at Jerusalem. For instance, the almshouses built
outside the city under his trusteeship are occupied by the friends of
the Scribes and those who pay court to them, not by the destitute for
whom they were intended. When the venerable philanthropist paid his
last visit, a collection of the poorest and the most miserable of the
community was hurriedly installed there, and after his departure was as
summarily ejected. The public has not forgotten his trip to Morocco,
which, however, if matters progress as they do now, may eventually be
regretted by his _protégés_.

[19] [I have retained 729, the date given by Burton, although Muhammad
died in 732 from the effects of the experiment.]

[20] Upon the _sanguineo-oleaginous expression_ of the Jews and the
consequent pendency of the epiglottis, see “A Cause of Diminished
Longevity among the Jews,” by Sir Duncan Gibb, Bart, M.A., M.D., LL.D.,
Article 10, _Journal of Anthropology_, No. 1, July, 1870, pp. 94-97. It
exactly describes many of the Jews of Syria and Palestine.

[21] This is a complete misnomer applied to Christianity, which it
confuses with the Rabbinical Schools of Tiberias and Safed.

[22] [The year would be 1873.]

[23] The Jewish family is still in England what it is all over the
East, the chief defence of the individual against society. Hence the
strong affections between relations. And for the same reason Jews are
excellent parents--it can hardly be otherwise when the son is expected
to liberate his father and mother from Sheol.

[24] This is a very small fibre of a very pretty root.



CHAPTER III

THE JEW OF THE HOLY LAND AND HIS DESTINY


In dealing with the Jews of the Holy Land, it is well to remember that
the two great branches of the Hebrew race are the Sephardím and the
Ashkenazím. They are both equally orthodox, and may intermarry when
they please. It is advisable to offer a few words concerning these
great branches first.

“Sepharad,” pronounced throughout “the East” _Safard_, a word occurring
only once in the Old Testament (“and the captivity of Jerusalem,
which is in Sepharad,” Obad. ver. 20), has been subjected to various
interpretations. Enough to say the majority of Jews following the
Targum Jonathan and the Peshito, or Syriac version, identify it with
Iberia, modern Spain and Portugal. The Sephardím claim descent from the
royal tribe of Judah, which, like the children of Benjamin, was the
last to disperse. It contains the usual three orders: (1) The Cohen (in
Arabic Káhin), the priest or Levite of the house of Aaron--a numerous
body, as the Cohens of England show. Though born an ecclesiastic, he
may now, since the rite of ordination has become extinct, pursue a
purely laical trade. Whenever a Jew slaughters an animal, the Cohen
claims the tongue, one side of the face, and one shoulder.[25] So in
the days of Josephus (_Antiquities of the Jews_, IV. iv. 4) the priest
took the maw, the cheek (or breast), and the right shoulder of the
sacrifice privately killed for a festival. (2) The Levite or descendant
of Levi, but not through the house of Aaron; like the Cohen, to whom he
should pay the tithe of his tithes, he must prove his genealogy, which
is often doubtful, and he is known by taking the name of Levi after his
own and before that of his birthplace--_e.g._ Simeon Levi Salonikli.
(3) “The circumcision” or Ammon Israelite.

Since the final destruction of the Temple there are no Gentile
Proselytes of the Covenant, that is, circumcised strangers admitted
to all the privileges of the children of Abraham; nor are there
Proselytes of the Gate, uncircumcised worshippers of Jehovah who keep
the moral law. The Ger, or stranger, may be received into the Church
under certain circumstances by purification and circumcision, which
latter, unlike the law of Muhammad, is absolutely necessary. Judaism,
however, like Hinduism and Guebrism, is essentially one of the old
congenital creeds; it never has been, it is not, and it never will be
a system of proselytizing. As regards the tribes, Judah and Levi are
everywhere known. Benjamin, Ephraim, and Half Manasseh are spoken of,
and tradition declares that Asher exists in Abyssinia with Karaïte
peculiarities. Finally, many Jews do not believe that the Ten Tribes
were ever lost. They say that, during the Great Captivity, when the
faith became all but extinct, they were mixed to such an extent that it
was afterwards impossible to separate them.

The Sephardím, or Southern Jews, are mostly the descendants of
Spanish and Portuguese ancestry, and throughout the Levant and the
North African coast they speak Spanish and read and write it in their
own character. Those of the Moroccan interior use Arabic. The dress
is Oriental, and in the Holy Land they still wear the black turban
ordained by the sumptuary laws of El Hakim (_circa_ A.D. 1000). In
physical appearance they are somewhat more prepossessing than the
Ashkenazím, who are outnumbering them in Syria and Palestine, and are
gradually ousting them. Officially they retain their position; the
Hakhám Bashí, or chief doctor, is the only Jewish official recognized
by the Turkish Government and representing the community in the
Majlis, or town council. In all matters which come before the tribunals
the Ashkenazím must be supported by the Hakhám Bashí, while the doctors
hear and decide all cases relating to the internal affairs of the
community. Many of the Sephardím are shopkeepers, trading chiefly
in stuffs and hardwares. There are many minor differences between
them and the Ashkenazím, such as the contents and the arrangement of
their ritual, the constitution of their meetings, the mode of reading
the service, their music, and even their cursive form of the square
Hebrew character. The Maghrabis, or Western Jews, chiefly living in
North-western Africa, rank elsewhere as Sephardím; at Jerusalem,
however, they are considered a separate sect, and have their own chief
doctor.

Thus the Sephardím are the Southern, opposed to the Northern Jews, or
Ashkenazím. These derive their name from Ashkenaz, son of Gomer, and
grandson of Japhet (Gen. x. 3), who is supposed to have peopled, in
ethnologic succession, Armenia (Jer. li. 27), Poland, Germany, and
Scandinavia--the latter according to some derives from him its name.
The Ashkenazím claim descent from Benjamin, and are generally supposed
not to have been present at the second building of the Temple by
Zorobabel (B.C. 520), as described in the Book of Ezra.

The Ashkenazím of the Holy Land are chiefly Germans, Poles,
Muscovites, and other Northerners. On January 26, 1849, an order from
the Russian Consulate-General of Beyrut obliged them either to return
home biennially in order to renew their passports or to give up their
nationality. They were then taken under the protecting wing of Great
Britain by the immense exertions of their co-religionists in the “City
of Refuge” (London) and of other Western powers. This step can hardly
be looked upon with satisfaction. Relying upon their new nationality,
they addict themselves openly to usury and to other transactions of a
doubtful and often of a dishonourable character. A determination to
protect the whole community from religious persecution, allowing the
Sultan to treat their commercial and civic affairs on the same footing
as all the rest of his subjects, would be much more just, and would
probably remedy not a few evils. In the year 1840 the Northern Jews
mustered few at Damascus, and even now they are not numerous; among
them may be mentioned old Abú Brahím, a well-known cicerone at Demitri
Cara’s Hotel, who usually passed for a Cohen.

The Ashkenazím speak a kind of Jew-German, garbled with Hebrew and
other foreign words. Their dress is a long robe like a dressing-gown,
and a low-crowned hat of felt or beaver; the lank love-lock hanging
down either cheek, and the eccentrically clipped fur caps, which,
despite the burning sun, they everywhere don for the Sabbath and
for feast-days, make their appearance not a little comical. In the
Holy Land they are mostly petty traders and craftsmen, supported in
part by the Hallorkah, or alms. Many Jews who have neither the time
nor the will to visit Jerusalem pay considerable sums for vicarious
prayers there offered by their co-religionists, and the contributions
are collected throughout Europe by appointed emissaries like the
begging friars of the Catholic world. This dole, distributed alike and
indiscriminately to all who occupy the four Holy Cities, brings many
idle and worthless persons together, and promotes early and improvident
marriages, every child being a source of additional increase. Some
steps should be taken to obviate the scandals of the Hallorkah. Much
vice, misery, and ill-feeling are engendered by the present system of
bounty, which leaves much behind when passing through the hands of
doctors responsible to no one for the money they receive. These men
live in comfort and even luxury; the terrorism, physical as well as
spiritual, with which they inspire their congregations, renders them
absolutely unassailable. Knowing that his doctor can excommunicate
him, and, what is more to the purpose, starve him and his family, not
a Jew dare object to, though he will loudly complain of, a system
of hypocrisy and peculation. And as a rule the almsgiving of the
Israelite, so exceptionally liberal throughout Western Europe, becomes
mean and niggardly throughout the Holy Land. In the absence of coin
sufficiently small, the wealthy Hebrews of Jerusalem have invented a
system of tin bits, which the mendicant must collect till sufficiently
numerous to be changed for currency. Whenever there is a famine in the
country, pauper Jews receive probably the least assistance from their
fellows dwelling within the same walls.

The Ashkenazím are divided into religious sects and social communities.
The former are three in number--_viz._ Parushím, Khasidím, and Khabad.
The Parushím, Pharisees or Separatists, follow the law as laid down
in the commentary of the late R. Gaon[26] of Wilna. They consider the
diligent study of the Talmud an essential for every religious Jew,
and they conduct their liturgy according to it, respecting, however,
the sense attached to various rites by the Cabalistic teachers. They
strictly observe the appointed times for prayer, but they do not
consider it necessary to dip the body in water before ablution. They
neglect the second pair of phylacteries prescribed by Rabbenu Tam.[27]
They do not hold it unlawful to slaughter animals for food with a knife
which is not very sharp, provided that the edge has no notches. They
regard a Passover cake as lawful, even though it be made of any kind
of wheat or flour.

The Khasidím (Cabalists), that most fanatical of Jewish sects, are here
for the most part unlearned. Their liturgy is according to Rambáni or
Maimonides (_Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon_), a Spaniard who flourished in the
twelfth century, and of whom it is said, “From Moses to Moses there
was none like Moses”; they interpret it, however, in the Cabalistic
sense. Their favourite book is the Holy Ri; they pray whenever they
feel bound to do so, no matter whether the prescribed time has passed
or not. Unlike the Parushím, they believe in certain Sadikím, or
righteous men, popularly called Gute Yaden (Juden), and regard them
with a superstitious veneration which borders upon worship, attributing
to them supernatural powers, and attaching some spiritual and symbolic
meanings to their most trivial and insignificant actions. Whilst
professing to be guided only by the Talmud, they in reality follow
the teaching of some chosen Guter Jude. The Khasidím are particular
in the observance of Jewish customs, especially such as relate to the
Sabbath. They shake themselves violently and cry aloud during prayers;
at other times they are much addicted to dancing, singing, and deep
drinking. They dip themselves in water before devotions, and use the
second pair of phylacteries. They deem it unlawful to slaughter animals
with a knife which is not very sharp, or to use any but a particular
kind of wheat for the Passover cakes. Much importance is attached by
this sect to works of charity; in this way they are guided by the Yad
ha-Khazakah, or “strong hand” of Maimonides, who assigns eight steps
or grades to the golden ladder of charity. The Parushím and Khasidím
combine in various proportions; for instance, in Tiberias all are
Khasidím except the doctor, who is a Parushi.

The Khabad, or third sect, suggests in name the Ebionites, or Jewish
Nazarenes, who hold the “great teacher of Nazareth” to be the Messiah,
but merely human; this sect, however, has apparently died out. The
modern Khabad have a liturgy arranged from their old Rabbi Zelmína.
They resemble the Khasidím, having their own Gute Juden, but they are
usually more learned and pious. They are given to hospitality and
charity, and attach much importance to visiting the sick. They dip
themselves before prayers, read and study much, and meet together on
Sabbath evenings to hear the Law expounded by their principal teacher.
They keep as a feast the 19th day of Kislef, the third civil and ninth
ecclesiastical month (about December); on that day R. Shalomon, the
founder of the sect, was liberated from prison.

The Ashkenazím are divided into social communities according to the
European district or city whence they came, and each section is
presided over by a scribe or a layman of respectability and good
standing. The chief communities of Parushím are the Wilna, Grainer,
Grodno, Minsk, Nassen, Warsaw, Zuolik, and German. Those of the
Khasidím are the Volhynian, the Hungaro-Austrian, and the Galician. The
Khabad are a community by themselves.

The Ashkenazím, who are wrongly represented to be considered pariahs
by the Sephardím, have brought from Northern climates a manliness
of bearing, a stoutness of spirit, and a physical hardness strongly
contrasting with the cowardly and effeminate, the despised and
despicable Sephardím “Jew of Israel’s land.” If spoken to fiercely,
they will reply in kind; if struck, they will return the blow; and
they do not fear to mount a horse, unlike their Southern brethren, who
prefer an ass, or at most an ambling pony, to the best of Arab blood.
They will travel by night over difficult and dangerous paths, whereas
their congeners tremble to quit the city walls; and they can endure
extremes of heat and cold, of hunger and thirst, which might be fatal
to any soft Syrian who would imitate them. The Ashkenazím of the Holy
Land are in a word “men”; the Sephardím are not. “The Spanish and
Portuguese Jews are of far higher and more intellectual type than the
English and German,” says Dr. Linsdale. Possibly; but in the matter
of manliness there is no comparison. And, as has been remarked, the
Ashkenazi is “eating up” the Sephardi wherever they meet.

Concerning the so-called unorthodox sects in the Holy Land a few brief
details may be given.

The Karaïtes (Caraïtes), translated “Readers,” that is “textualists,”
assign a literal sense to all Holy Writ, and reject every book
posterior to the Law and the Prophets; they are therefore considered
pestilent heretics. These Puritans, claiming descent from the Ten
Tribes who took no part in the Crucifixion, are scattered throughout
Arabia, with Bagdad for a centre; and they are most numerous in Russia
and Poland, where they could boast that for four centuries none of
their number had ever been found guilty of a serious crime. Henderson
the traveller numbers some four thousand of them in the Crimea with
their Cohens, or priests. At Pentecost, they read, we are told, as
Ha-phatorah, or conclusions of the day, Joel ii. 28-32, whereas other
Jews stop at ver. 27. There is still a large colony at Aden, where the
English authorities have found nothing to complain of them. Formerly
there were many at Damascus; now they have left it _en masse_: the
Protestant cemetery occupies part of their old burial-ground, whose
gravestones are distinguished from those of the Jews. In Syria they are
mostly confined to Jerusalem, where till lately they numbered seven
families (thirty-five souls). Their single, poor synagogue, a small
cellar-like chamber, which dates back, they say, for many centuries,
lies opposite the big new building of the orthodox. Its sole object of
attraction is one old manuscript of the Pentateuch, and the other Jews
so hate them that the stranger will not readily find his way to their
place of worship. In early 1872 they were reinforced by an emigration
from Bagdad numbering forty souls, who reported that many more were
on the way. These men all wore Bedawin dresses, which, however, they
changed for the usual Jewish garb when once settled in the city.

The Samaritans are now found only at Nablús, the classical Neapolis,
or new town. They claim descent from Ephraim and Manasseh, whilst
their Cohens are of course Levites; the orthodox opprobriously call
them Kúthím, or Babylonians, and despite physical evidence utterly
deny their Jewish consanguinity. All contact with them is defiling,
as though they were Gentiles. The total is now forty families, or
a hundred and thirty-five souls; they will not intermarry with any
but their own people; the birth of males, contrary to what might be
expected, outnumbers that of females in the proportion of eighty to
fifty-five, and consequently the “undying dogmatism” is threatened
with dying out. The little sect owes its fame in Europe to the three
well-known codices which every stranger hastens to inspect. According
to their Hakháms, whilst repeating the Talmud they study the Targum of
R. Levi. They keep their Passover by solar computation, not lunar, like
the Hebrews; for instance, in 1871 the former held the feast on May 3,
and the latter on April 5. Moreover, they still sacrifice and eat their
Paschal Lamb upon Mount Gerizim.

Jerusalem is sometimes visited by some of the “Black Jews” of
Malabar and Western India, concerning whom so much absurdity has
been written. The “White Jews” of India have a tradition according
to which their ancestors, numbering ten thousand souls, emigrated
Eastward about A.D. 70, and settled about Cranganore on the Malabar
coast. Here they remained till A.D. 1565, when they were driven into
the interior by the Portuguese. As no synagogue can be founded without
a minimum congregation of ten free and adult males, the white Jews
when necessary simply bought back their nine Hindu slaves, manumitted
them, circumcised and bathed them, and thus obtained their wishes. The
“Reformed British Jews,” mostly Ashkenazím, who date from the 7th of
Ellúl, A.M. 5601 (August 24, 1841), and whose prayer-book is edited by
their minister, the Rev. Mr. Marks, are hardly likely to make way in
“the East” with such ultra-Karaïte doctrine as “the sufficiency of the
Law of Moses for the guidance of Israel,” and with their opposition to
the divinity of the traditions contained in the Mishnah; and in the
Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds they would only be included in the
host

    Of petulant, capricious sects,
    The maggots of corrupted texts.

There is little to say concerning the physical peculiarities of
the Eastern Jew, who in all the salient points of form and feature
remarkably resembles his brother of Houndsditch and the Minories.
Here and there the lines are less curved, the profile is straight and
high, whilst there are a few local varieties like the fair hair and
olive-coloured eyes of Dalmatia. The highest type contains a certain
softness of expression, with that decisive cast of mouth and chin which
may be seen in the London policeman and in the backwoodsman of the
Far West. Although centuries of oppression have necessarily given to
the many that cringing, deprecating glance, that shifting look which
painfully suggests a tame beast expecting a blow, yet we still find
both amongst the Ashkenazím and the Sephardím red Jews and black Jews;
fierce-eyed, dark-browed, and hollow-cheeked, with piercing acuteness
of glance, and an almost reckless look of purpose. Greed and craft, and
even ferocity, are to be read in such faces, but rarely weakness, and
never imbecility; roughness, unculture, and coarseness are there, not
vulgarity, nor want of energy; and the Christian physiognomy by their
side looks commonplace when contrasted with those features so full of
concentration and vigorous meaning.

These are the same men as those who under happier auspices organize
such worldwide institutions as the Alliance Israëlite Universelle, with
its heart in Paris and its limbs extending far and wide on the earth,
whilst increasing organization proposes to extend them farther and
wider. Its object is simply to promote concerted action amongst the
Jews scattered about both hemispheres; to effect unity and community
in all matters interesting to the Jewish body politic; to forward the
interest of its friends, and to effect the ruin of its enemies. Thus
it will eventually absorb by taking under its charge such detached
institutions as the Khagal, or Communal Government of the Hebrews in
Russia. It is the fashion to praise the organization of the Jesuits,
the Freemasons, the Carbonari, the Mormons, and other bodies, who have
an esoteric system underlying the exoteric form. As far as my knowledge
goes, none can be compared with that of the Jews, because those are
local and partial, whereas these are all but universal.

Such men easily become the warriors of commerce, bringing to the battle
of interests, the campaign of life, all that boldness and resolution,
that persistence and heroism, that subtlety and unscrupulousness which
the Patriarchs and the Maccabees carried out into the personal conflict
of sword and spear. They become the great potentates of finance and
capital, who have agents and reporters in every chief centre of the
world; who know every project, what is to flourish and what is to
founder; what enterprise is to be effectual, and what is to fail. If a
seaport want a dock, a city require a bulwark, or a country demand a
railway or a loan, they are ever ready to furnish each and all. And as
a rule they are not unfair, they are not mean; indeed there is often
a certain generosity in their conditions. But they always bargain for
something besides money. They stipulate, for instance, that this man
should be allowed to participate in these profits, that another should
be excluded from those advantages; their interests are so various
and so widespread that they need political power everywhere, and as
they must have it so they will have it. One offence, one deadly sin,
never forgiven, never forgotten, is insubordination in the ranks,
however trifling. Let a secondary firm attempt to throw off the yoke
by launching out, for instance, into an enterprise unauthorized by the
Great House; straightway its credit is assailed, its acceptances are
dishonoured, its ruin is assured. Such are the arts which have enabled
the Jew to arrive at his present position. And he may confidently look
forward to the time when the whole financial system, not only of Europe
from one end to the other, but of the whole world, will be in the
hands of a few crafty capitalists, whose immense wealth shall, with a
few pulsations of the telegraph, unthrone dynasties and determine the
destinies of nations.

It remains now only to touch upon the future prospects of the Jewish
race. This important consideration is still subject to two widely
different opinions.

The first, which may be called the vapid utterance of the so-called
Liberal School, speaks as follows: “In this century we are battering
down the ponderous walls of prejudice which nations and sects have
erected in past times, for the separation of themselves from their
neighbours, or as a coign of vantage from which to hurl offensive
weapons at them. Roman Catholic and Jewish emancipation have been
conceded, though tardily, and we may fairly hope that in the next
generation our political, social, and commercial relations with
our fellow-men will be conducted without regard to their religious
belief or their ethnological origin.” The trifling objection to this
“harmonious and tolerant state of things” is that, though the Christian
may give up his faith and race, the Jew, however readily he may throw
overboard the former, will cling to the latter with greater tenacity,
as it will be the very root and main foundation of his power.

The second is the Judophobic or Roman Catholic view of the supremacy
of Jewish influence in the governments and the diplomacy of Europe.
It openly confesses its dread of Judaic encroachments, and it goes
the full length of declaring that, unless the course of events be
changed by some quasi-miraculous agency, the triumph of the Israelite
over Christian civilization is inevitable--in fact, that Judaism, the
oldest and exclusive form of the great Semitic faith, will at least
outlive, if it does not subdue and survive, Christianity, whose triumph
has been over an alien race of Aryans. “Gold,” it argues, “is the
master of the world, and the Jewish people are becoming masters of
the gold. By means of gold they can spread corruption far and wide,
and thus control the destinies of Europe and of the world.” For the
last quarter of a century the dominant Church in France seems to have
occupied itself in disseminating these ideas, and the number of books
published by the alarmists and replied to by Jewish authors is far from
inconsiderable. Witness the names of MM. Tousseuel, Bédarride, Th.
Halliz, Rev. P. Ratisbonne, and A. C. de Medelsheim, without specifying
the contributors to the _Union Israëlite_ and the _Archives Israëlites_
of Paris--a sufficient proof of the interest which this question has
excited, and of the ability with which it has been discussed in France.

But these are generalisms which require the specification of
particulars. Where, however, the field is so extensive, we must limit
ourselves to the most running survey of Europe and the Holy Land.
Throughout this continent the career of the Jew is at once thriving
and promising. The removal of Jewish disabilities in England and the
almost universal spread of constitutionalism throughout Europe have
told mightily in favour of the Jews. An essential condition of all
reform is that the reformer never can say, “Thus far will I go, and
no farther.” In sporting parlance, he took off the weight from a dark
horse, and the latter is everywhere winning in a canter. The father
kept a little shop in the Ghetto; the son has palaces and villas, buys
titles, crosses, and other graven images utterly unknown to the Mosaic
Law, and intermarries with the historic Christian families of the land.
The great, if not the only, danger is that in the outlying parts of
Europe, where men are not thoroughly tamed, and where the sword is
still familiar to the hand, the Jew advances far too fast; nor is it
easy to see how his career can be arrested before it hurries him over
the precipice. At this moment Hungary is a case in point. The Magnate,
profuse in hospitality, delighting in display, careless of expenditure,
and contemptuous of economy, sees all his rich estates, with their
flocks and herds, their crops and mines, passing out of his own hands,
and contributing to swell the bottomless pocket of the Jewish usurer.
But the Magyar is a fiery race; and if this system of legal robbery be
allowed to pass a certain point, which, by-the-bye, is not far distant,
the Jews must prepare themselves for another disaster right worthy of
the Middle Ages. And they will have deserved it.

As regards the restoration of Israel to the Holy Land, that favourite
theme of prophecy and poetry, that day-dream of the Jew, at least
until he found a country and a home in the far happier regions beyond
his ancient seats, no supernatural gift is required to point out the
natural course of events. Though the recovery of Jerusalem is the
subject of eternal supplication throughout the Jewish world, wealthy
and prosperous Jews openly declare that they take no personal interest
in the matter. The prayer, in fact, has become a mere formula.[28]
Still, with six millions of souls, which will presently become nine,
there can be no difficulty in finding volunteers like those who now
garrison the four Holy Cities--Jerusalem and Hebron, Tiberias and
Safed. A single million of souls would give the Israelite complete
command over the Land of Promise in the widest acceptation of the
term, and it will not be long before this number can be contributed.

The Jews might readily return to Judæa; but there is a lion in the
path. Russia cares little for Constantinople, which will fall to her
in the fulness of time when the fruit is ripe. But she will brook no
interference with the Holy Land, except for her own benefit. This
power, half European and half Asiatic, greatly indebted withal for her
success in life to the mixture which she despises, has the immense
advantage of a peculiar and homogeneous creed, in which she believes
with childish ardour and which she preaches with virile energy. To
her, conquest is not mere increase of area, of physical growth. It
is extending the field of proselytism, of religion; and this view
of national progress and of racial duty is at once her strength and
her weakness, her glory and her shame. She finds the headquarters
of Christianity necessary to the full development of her religious
superiority, and in the ever-increasing weakness of the Latin Church
she descries her best opportunity.

Thus, as modern travellers assure us, Russia is quietly absorbing the
Holy Places in Syria and Palestine. A bran-new Jerusalem of church,
convent, and hospice, which a few days’ work would convert into forts
and barracks, has lately risen outside the grey old walls and towers
of Jebus, concealing them from the ardent gaze of the pilgrim as he
tops the last hill leading to the Jaffa Gate. At Hebron the Muscovite
was not allowed to buy building-ground within the settlement; he bought
the oak which passes itself off for Abraham’s terebinth, and here again
will be a church, convent, and hospice. Jacob’s Well at Shechem has
shared the same fate, and even Tiberias is threatened with a fourth
church, convent, and hospice. The so-called Greeks,[29] whose Muscovite
sympathies are well known, were granted such boons as the monopoly of
Mount Tabor, whose classic and Saracenic ruins were ruthlessly pulled
down to build a cockney church and convent. This usurpation became so
intolerable, that in the summer of 1872 the Latin monks attacked the
intruders, seized _vi et armis_ a part of the mountain to which they
laid claim, and enclosed their conquest with a wall. On the other hand,
when the Latins proved an undoubted right to their ancestral chapel at
Kefr Kenna (Cana in Galilee), the Greeks were instructed to set up a
rival claim, and both were formally dismissed with the oyster shell,
the oyster having been pronounced Wukúf, or mosque endowment.

This Russian pre-emption of the Holy Land is a benefit to the Jew,
although the latter may not recognize it. But for this he would hasten
to fulfil the prophecy; he would buy up the country, as indeed he is
now doing at Jerusalem;[30] he would conquer the people by capital, and
he would once more form a nation.

But here the question obtrudes itself: “If Judaism should again
prevail--indeed its advocates say it shall prevail universally--how
long could it endure?”

Those who know the codes of the Talmud and of the Safed School, which
are still, despite certain petty struggles, the life-light of Judaism,
will have no trouble in replying. A people whose highest ideas of
religious existence are the superstitious sanctification of Sabbath,
the washing of hands, the blowing of ram’s horns, the saving rite of
circumcision, and the thousand external functions compensating for
moral delinquencies, with Abraham sitting at the gate of Hell to keep
it closed for Jews; a community which would declare marriage impossible
to some twelve millions of Gentiles, forbid them the Sabbath, and
sentence to death every “stranger” reading an Old Testament; which
would have all the Ger who are not idolaters without religion, whilst
forbidding those whom it calls “idolaters” (the Christians) to exercise
the commonest feelings of humanity; which would degrade and insult
one-half of humanity, the weaker sex, and which would sanction slavery,
and at the same time oppress and vilify its slaves by placing them
on a level with oxen and asses; a faith which, abounding in heathen
practices, would encourage the study of the Black Art, would loosen
every moral obligation, would grant dispensations to men’s oaths, and
would sanction the murder of the unlearned; a system of injustice,
whose Sanhedrins, at once heathenish and unlawful, have distinguished
themselves only for force and fraud, for superabundant self-conceit,
for cold-blooded cruelty, and for unrelenting enmity to all human
nature,--such conditions, it is evident, are not calculated to create
or to preserve national life. The civilized world would never endure
the presence of a creed which says to man, “Hate thy neighbour unless
he be one of ye,” or of a code written in blood, not in ink, which
visits the least infractions of the Rabbinical laws with exorcism and
excommunication, with stoning and flogging to death.[31] A year of such
spectacles would more than suffice to excite the wrath and revenge of
outraged humanity; the race, cruel, fierce, dogged, and desperate as
in the days of Titus and Hadrian, would defend itself to the last; the
result would be another siege and capture of Jerusalem, and the “Chosen
People” would once more lie prostrate in their blood and be stamped out
of the Holy Land.

Briefly, it is evident that nothing but Russian preponderance in Syria
and Palestine prevents its being reoccupied by its old intolerant
and persecuting owners,[32] and that to these the greatest possible
misfortune would be the granting of their daily, weekly, and yearly
prayer--

                _Next year may we meet at Jerusalem._

FOOTNOTES:

[25] In consequence of the accident which occurred to Jacob (Gen.
xxxii.) his descendants still abstain from the hind-quarters of the few
beasts left to them by Leviticus xv.

[26] Gaon means a learned man: had he not some other name?

[27] [Rabbenu Tam was the most distinguished disciple of the renowned
R. Rashi (1040-1105 A.D.).]

[28] The formula, however, is still perpetually repeated. On the
Sabbaths preceding the new moons Jehovah is adjured to “gather the
dispersed, the united people of Israel from the four corners of the
earth.” The sunset devotions, the Yom ha-Kippur, or Great Day of
Atonement, concludes with, “Next year we shall be in Jerusalem.” At the
Passover feast before the fourth cup the Lord is blessed, and all say,
as they have been saying during the last eighteen centuries, “The year
that approaches we shall be in Jerusalem.” The burden of the Musaph
concluding the Sabbath services is that God may be pleased to return
His people from their dispersions, and restore them to the possession
of Jerusalem and the Temple.

[29] Not to be confounded with Hellenes. These Greeks are Syrian and
Christian peasants (felláhín), without a drop of Greek blood in their
veins, but belonging to the so-called Greek Church.

[30] In 1873 the population of the Holy City is generally laid down as:

          Jews         9,500
          Christians   5,300
          Muslims      5,000
                      ------
          Total       19,800

[Owing to the recent immigration especially of Russian Jews, and to the
opening of the railway to the coast of Jaffa, these figures have been
more than quadrupled. In 1896 the whole population was estimated at
over 80,000, of whom nearly 40,000 were Jews, 25,000 Christians of all
denominations, and 15,000 Muhammadans, chiefly Turks and Arabs.]

[31] It has been well remarked that no Hebrew citizen was ever
condemned to exile. If guilty, he was punished, but not made an outcast
and infamous, forced to sin by dwelling beyond the holy soil of their
own land in the impure and accursed rest of earth.

[32] It is interesting to read what the inspired Jew Spinoza wrote upon
the Jews: “The rite of circumcision, I am fain to persuade myself,
is of such moment in this matter (_i.e._ of isolating nations) that
it alone, methinks, were enough to preserve this people distinct for
ever; indeed, unless the fundamentals of their religion bring upon
them effeminacy of mind and character, I am inclined to believe that,
with the opportunity afforded, since human affairs are notoriously
changeable, they may again recover their empire, and God elect them to
Himself anew.... To conclude, were any one disposed to maintain that
the Jews, for the cause assigned, or for any other cause whatsoever,
had been especially chosen by God to all eternity, I should not gainsay
him, provided he allowed that this choice was most in respect of
nothing but empire and personal advantages (in which only one nation
can be distinguished from another), for as regards understanding
and true virtue no nation is more remarkable than another, and so
cannot on such grounds be looked on as elected by God” (_Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_, chap. iii.).

It is instructive to compare with the sage’s text two commentaries
of his editions. One of them assures us that, no longer persecuted
by Pope and Kaiser or Christian community, “with no mark of civic
distinction denied the Jews, they will soon become absorbed into the
larger Christian communities, surrounded by whom they now dwell in all
the countries of Europe; they will finally disappear, and leave only
historical records of their existence.” At present, however, Judaism
bids fair to rise above and to survive Christianity. In B. Auerbach’s
_Leben Spinozas_ we are told that the immediate cause which to Spinoza
suggested this “curious persuasion” (the restoration of the Jews) may
have been this, that a certain Sabbathai Zewi,[33] who had lately
appeared in Greece, caused such a commotion amongst his co-religionists
as at one time to make their regeneration and reconstitution into a
sovereignty appear not impossible.

[33] [Better known under the popular form Cevi.]



CHAPTER IV

THE JEW AND THE TALMUD


The present chapter contains many an assertion which will make the
expert Talmudist smile. It will, however, serve one most useful
purpose--namely, to show what the Christians and Muslims of the East
hold to be the belief of the Hebrew race and the practices of men
dwelling within the same walls as themselves. That this hostility to
the Eastern Jews is no mere unreasoning prejudice, but is founded in
some sort on fact, the following brief survey of the Rabbinical and
Talmudic writings will show. A people which has such a vindictive Oral
Law is sure to excite the spirit of retaliation, for obviously the Law
exists not merely in letter, but in the spirit.

In a notorious trial in Damascus within living memory, which roused
the anti-Jewish feeling in that city and indeed throughout Syria to
a frenzy, certain learned doctors brought into court as evidence a
number of manuscripts and printed books. It was remarked that the texts
were full of lacunæ. This was explained by the fact that they are
so written, since Europe began to read the Rabbinical and Talmudic
writings, for the purpose of concealing what might excite odium.
The divines supply the omissions by inserting them in writing, or
preferably by committing them to memory. Thus they suppress offensive
sectarian words, such as Goi (plural Goyím), the wicked, the forgetful
of God--that is to say, Gentiles in general, including Christians and
Muslims; Miním, or Karaïte Jews; Kuthim, Samaritans; Nakhrím, strangers
or infidels, corresponding with the Arabic Káfirin, or the Turkish
Giaour; and Ndoyyím, or Mesúmedím, in Arabic Mahrúmín or Murtaddín, the
excommunicated. And it is evident that they had good reasons for this
prudence; the Seder Adarhout, for instance, enumerates with the object
of refuting them many foul crimes attributed to the Jews.

The most important and pregnant tenet of modern Jewish belief is that
the Ger, or stranger, in fact all those who do not belong to their
religion, are brute beasts, having no more rights than the fauna of the
field. Thus in Lucio Ferraris (_Prompta Bibliotheca_, Vol. III., sub
lit. E and H, Order 4, Tract 8) we read: “Præcipitur omnibus Judæis ut
Christianes omnes loco brutorum habeant, nec aliter eos tractent quam
bruta animalia.” The argument from which this abominable belief is
derived appears to be as follows: “When Abraham was ordered to offer
up Isaac (Gen. xxii.), he saddled his ass, and took two of his young
men with him. But when he saw the place of sacrifice,[34] he said unto
his young men, ‘Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go
yonder and worship, and come again to you.’” The Talmud declares that
Abraham, who had seen God, asked his servants if they had likewise done
so; and on their replying in the negative, he said to them, “Abide
ye here with the ass,” meaning that they were animals like the ass.
But this is by no means contrary to Scripture doctrine; for instance,
Jeremiah (x. 8) calls the votaries of false religion “altogether
brutish and foolish.” Thus the Law and the Prophets belong exclusively
to the Jews; the Gentile reading or even buying a copy should be put to
death. All the books of other faiths must be burnt, even though they
contain the name of Jehovah; and if any but a Hebrew write the name of
God in a Bible which is not a Jewish manuscript, the volume must also
be burnt.

The Jew who does not keep the Sabbath (Saturday)[35] according to
Rabbinical Law must suffer excision, be stoned to death, or incur
the flogging of rebellion, that is, he must be “beaten until his soul
go out,” like all those who transgress affirmative commandments. Some
Rabbis hold that a Hebrew, hearing the sound of the trumpet, should
stand or sit in the same position until the evening of the Holy Day.
All manner of work is absolutely forbidden to the Jew: he is guilty
of capital crime if he carry a snuff-box or a pocket-handkerchief; he
may not light a fire to cook his meals, nor extinguish it to prevent
his house being burnt down. Until the days of the Maccabees he could
not defend his life against an enemy; and when Strabo informs us that
Pompey (B.C. 63) stormed Jerusalem “by waiting for the day of fast,
on which the Jews were in the habit of abstaining from all work,”
he evidently alludes to the Saturday. The modern Jew in Syria and
Palestine can walk only two thousand paces upon the Sabbath, except
when travelling through the dangerous desert.[36] He will not receive
money on that day, or transact any business, however profitable; it
is moreover the fashion to keep a grave face, and to speak as little
as possible. Yet he is not the strictest of Sabbatarians, and his
women rather enjoy being called upon between the services[37] in
order to display their dresses and jewellery. Of course there are
many “guiles,” technically so called, in order to elude restrictions
which savour of the degrading spirit peculiar to the Oral Law, which
is little more than the Rabbinical Criminal Code intended to raise and
provide for an aristocracy of savants. For instance, most wealthy
families, forgetting that he who hires a man to murder a third person
is really _the_ murderer, habitually keep Muslim servants, who can boil
coffee and serve pipes to Gentile friends. And the latter must by no
means join in honouring the day. According to the Talmud (chap, iv.,
Sanhedrin, of the fourth Mishnic Section, or order Seder Nezikin), the
Gentile sanctifying the Sabbath must be put to death without asking
questions, even as the Lord said to him, “Thou shalt not rest day nor
night.”[38]

The Oral Law is superior in dignity to all others.[39] In the _Prompta
Bibliotheca_ we find (p. 297, Order 4, Tract 4, Dist. 10): “Gravius
plectendos esse qui contradicunt verbis Scribarum quam verbis Mosaicæ
Legis, quibus qui contradixerit, morte moriatur.” And he must die
by the flogging of rebellion, a Rabbinical practice utterly unknown
to the Pentateuch, which ordered forty stripes, whereas in the New
Dispensation the offender must be flogged without intermission till he
expires. Thus the Scribes and Pharisees still sit in Moses’ seat. The
modern Jew follows the creed of Maimonides (twelfth century), which
contains thirteen fundamental articles, the last being the resurrection
of the dead. The ancient Jew obeyed the Twelve Commandments without
a word about the resurrection. The sojourning proselyte who would be
saved must become a Noahite, and obey the Seven Commandments assured to
the Noachidæ; the Hakhám Abú'l Afíya gave them as follows:

  1. Thou shalt not worship planets, stars, or idols.

  2. Thou shalt not fornicate nor commit adultery.

  3. Thou shalt not slay (man).

  4. Thou shalt not steal.[40]

  5. Thou shalt not eat in the street the flesh of a lamb.

  6. Thou shalt not castrate the sons of Abraham, mankind, or any
      other animal.

  7. Thou shalt not join the several races of animals.[41]

More correctly speaking, this code given to the Noachidæ, or
Noahites, commands them to abstain from the Seven Deadly Sins: (1)
idolatry; (2) irreverence to God; (3) homicide; (4) robbery, fraud,
and plunder--generally, not only of a co-religionist; (5) adultery;
(6) disobedience and misrule; and (7) eating part of an animal still
living, or the blood of the dead. The latter was added (Gen. ix. 4) to
the Six Sins forbidden to Adam--namely, idolatry, blasphemy, shedding
of blood, incest, robbery, and injustice.

But the sojourning proselyte[42] receives scant consolation, as he may
not be received when the Jubilee cannot be observed (Hilchoth Issure
Biah, xiv. 7, 8); and this ceased after Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh
were led away captive, or in B.C. 884, according to common chronology.
Add to this 1,873, and we have 2,757 years since the last feast of the
kind, and we have twenty-seven centuries and a half since any Gentiles
were converted from the errors of idolatry to the religion of the sons
of Noah.

Those who transgress any of the Commandments transgress them all.[43]
The goods of Gentiles who have not conformed to the Noahite code,
that is to say, all now living, are lawful to the Hebrews. This right
was first conferred by Jehovah during the Exodus from Egypt, and it
was confirmed to the descendants of the wanderers by the Talmud (Baba
Masiaah, or Middle Gate, second of the fourth order, and Abodah Zarah,
eighth of the same).

Rabbinical religion is rampant in the kitchen. Blood first forbidden
to Noah (Gen. ix. 4), and afterwards to all the sons of Abraham (Lev.
iii. 17 and vi. 30)--because it was supposed to contain the vital
principle which it does not--must be drained out of the meat before
this can be eaten. The usual practice is by macerating it in water for
thirty minutes, and leaving it in salt for an hour. It is then taken
out and washed again, a peculiar wooden tub and sieve being used for
the purpose. In Morocco the Jews also pound the flesh till the fibre is
broken, and thus it becomes more tender and less able to be kept--this,
however, is a local practice unknown to the Jews elsewhere. The Talmud
declares that there are two kinds of blood pleasing to the Lord--_viz._
(1) that of the Paschal holocaust; (2) that of circumcision. In the
books of Moses we find that blood is used as a purifier. For instance,
the Lawgiver (Exod. xxiv. 6-8) took half of the blood drained from
victims and put it in basins, with which he sprinkled the people to
cleanse them from the abominations of the Egyptians, and the other half
he sprinkled upon the altar. Human blood is not used by us in its pure
state; nor can we[44] call it human, for the Gentiles are mere vermin,
and of their daughters it is said, “Cursed be he that lieth with any
beast.” It must also mostly undergo through manipulation a change of
essence.[45] Nor is it administered indiscriminately, but only to the
most zealous. On the eve of the Passover the chief Scribe attends the
oven, and mixes what he pleases with the cakes, which are then sent
round to the congregation.

A Jew abandoning the faith of Israel must die the death; also he
should be surely slain for all such breaches of the Law as committing
adultery. All who admit the doctrine of the Trinity, whether they be
Jewish perverts, Christians, Muslims, or Pagans; all Hebrews who have
violated the secrets of the Synagogue;[46] and all those especially
who speak against or who injure a co-religionist, have forfeited their
lives. In these days minor offenders are usually excommunicated;[47]
but those who have been informers or who proved themselves hostile to
Israel must be killed at all risks, either by the Jews themselves, or,
better still, through the local authorities. This is an invariable
rule.[48]

We read in the tract Sanhedrin (fourth of fourth order, p. 58) that
the Gentile who strikes a Jew has committed a capital offence; this
ordinance is as old as the sojourn of Moses in Egypt. He who strikes a
Jew strikes the Deity. The “sons of Noah” may be slain by the sentence
of a single Rabbi, or upon the testimony of a solitary witness,
although the latter be a relation. A descendant of the Hebrews who,
learning the true God in the days of Abraham, thereby separated
themselves from and exalted themselves above the rest of humanity,
may not be put to death but by the decision of twenty Rabbis and on
the testimony of two witnesses. A Gentile forfeits life if he cause a
pregnant Jewess or her fruit to perish; a Jew is not to be punished
capitally for such crime, but he must pay for the loss of the child (p.
57). The “son of Noah” who blasphemes the Holy Name, who has committed
adultery with or who has slain a co-religionist, ceases to merit death
by becoming a sojourning proselyte; but he must not be suffered to
escape if he has slain a Jew, or if he has committed adultery with a
Jewess (p. 71). The Jew must not contract friendship with Gentiles,
lest, an oath being necessary, he be compelled to swear by an idol (p.
63). He may not eat bread prepared by the heathen, for fear of undue
intimacy being the result. Market bread may be bought and eaten, but
on condition that it was made for sale, not for private use and then
sold--it is usual to burn a bit of such bread before using it. A Jew
may not eat victuals cooked by Gentiles, although vessels from a Jewish
house were used in the presence of Jews--this extends even to a roasted
egg.

The tract Abodah Zarah, before alluded to, asserts (p. 4) that all
the commandments kept by Jews[49] shall bear friendly and favourable
witness in heaven before all the assembled souls of men, and to the
confusion of every other faith. Hebrews dwelling out of the four Holy
Cities are as idol-worshippers, but without blame. A Jew going to a
Gentile marriage feast eats impure food, although the meats be cooked
by Jews and served by Jews in the presence of Jews; he even commits a
sin if he enters the house within thirty days of the coming ceremony
(p. 8). Gentiles should be prevented as much as possible purchasing
immovable property. It is not allowed to speak well of a Gentile, man
or woman, and it is a sin to make a present to them (p. 20), to greet
or to approach them; and the Jew becomes as ceremonially impure by
handling anything touched by them, by drinking out of the same cup,
or by sleeping under the same roof, as if eating with them. Hebrews
should never tether their beasts in places not belonging to them, at
least without locking them up, lest the heathen plunder or pollute
them. Gentiles preferred the Jews’ beasts to their own women, because
evil entered into Eve on the day when the serpent (demon) committed
adultery with her. A Jewess may not live amongst the heathen, because
possibly the latter do not hold adultery to be a sin; a Jew should
also beware for fear of their killing him, as they probably will do.
Israel was purified of every sin upon Mount Sinai; but the descendants
of the peoples not present there preserve their perversity (p. 22).
If a Hebrew wayfarer meet a Gentile armed with a sword (worn on the
left), he should pass on the other’s right side, and _vice versa_ if
the stranger has only a staff, so that the arm can be seized before the
weapon can be used; he must also name a distant place when asked his
journey’s end, in order that the Gentile may defer slaying him till too
late (p. 25).[50] The better to prevent all intimacy, the Jew must not
buy wine or vinegar from a Gentile, who also may perhaps have used it
in pagan rites. If a Christian, a Muslim, or an idolater touch a cup
containing wine, the Jewish owner must throw away the wine or sell it
to the heathen, and cleanse the cup. The same is the case with grapes.
The Law forbids the Israelites to marry the daughters of the Seven
Tribes that held the land before the conquest--namely, the Hittites,
Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
This, say the writers of and commentators on the Talmud, arose from
the fact of these women being impure from their childhood upwards.
Others, however, whilst including all Gentiles in these Seven Tribes,
assert that the prohibition was not on account of any special impurity,
such women being vermin or brute beasts not subject to the normal
feminine infirmities. Thus the learned restrain their weaker brethren
who might suppose that an impure Gentile woman is pure to them, and who
might even extend it to the case of a Jewess. Hence again the deduction
that only the Hebrews are human beings (p. 35).[51]

Tract Arubim (second of the second order, Seder Moed, Of Appointed
Seasons) declares (p. 62) that if a Jew live under the same roof with
a Gentile who breaks the Sabbath (Saturday),[52] the former, lest he
be robbed, should drive out the latter by hiring the whole house. But
he may expel the heathen as he can or as he pleases; all tenements
inhabited by others than Jews are dens of beasts which cannot become
householders. The “son of Noah” who steals even a farthing should be
put to death--one of ten commandments given by God in His covenant with
Noah--and he cannot be pardoned unless he restore the stolen goods. But
God enjoined this restitution only upon Gentiles becoming Israelites
(_i.e._ sojourning proselytes); all other thieves must be instantly and
pitilessly slain.

In tract Ohaleth (second of the sixth order, called Seder Taharoth,
or Of Purification) we read (§ 6) that the graves of Gentiles cannot
be held impure because they are not tenanted by human beings, and
that when the law declares sitting upon tombs a cause of defilement
it alludes only to those of Jews. Chapter Baba Bathra (third tract of
the fourth order) declares (§ I, p. 10, also repeated in another part
of the same tract) that all alms given by Jews are acceptable to God,
whereas those of the Gentiles are so many sins because their objects
are ostentation and the preservation of their children. If, however,
the Jew declare that his alms-deeds are meant to save his family and
to win Paradise, still they are grateful to Jehovah--a privilege
allowed only to the children of Israel. In the same tract we are also
informed that Esau, the son of Isaac, sinned five times in one day,
by committing adultery with a heathen, by slaying his neighbour, by
profaning the name of his God, by insulting the resurrection of the
dead at the coming of the Messiah, and by degrading the rights of
primogeniture.[53] Rabbi Shalomon argues, from the fact of Ishmael
laughing when his brother Isaac was born, that Sarah concluded
therefrom, either that he held her to be an adulteress, or that she
saw him commit a murder; thus he draws the deduction that Ishmael had
broken the Seven Commandments, and that consequently his descendants
cannot bear witness against Jews (p. 16).

Tract Bechoroth (on Primogeniture, fourth of the fifth order, Seder
Kodashim, Of Holy Things) gives (i. 17) the formula of the Scribes’
prayers, and tells us that there are two things which hinder men from
keeping the law of God--the action of demons and dependence upon
Gentiles. The Lord explains to the angels that usury is permitted only
to the Hebrews, who, being ordered to give thanks after food, praise
their Creator even when they have eaten only an egg or an olive (p.
20). A Jew may not pray before a naked Gentile, though the latter be
in the category of a wild beast (p. 25). This tract relates that a
Jew, beaten by a Scribe when detected in adultery with an Egyptian
woman, complained to a Gentile ruler that the law had been taken into
private hands. The Scribe pleaded that he had surprised the criminal
with a she-ass, and called the prophet Elijah to bear witness. “Why
didst thou not slay him?” asked the magistrate. The reply was that,
since the children of Israel had been driven from their own country,
such a punishment could not be inflicted by them, but that the judge
could do as he pleased. When both left the court, the Jew charged the
Scribe with having called Elijah as a witness to a lie. “Wretch!”
exclaimed the learned man, “and are they not the same as she-asses?”
But as the Jew was about to return and report this explanation, the
Scribe slew him with his staff (i., p. 58). Hence it appears that this
tenet is a religious secret whose violation merits death. When a Jew
looks upon the grave of a brother Jew, he must say: “Blessed is He who
hath created us by law, who has promised to raise us again by law, and
who knoweth our number; blessed is He who revives the dead.” But if
the tomb be that of a Gentile, he must say: “Shame upon thy mother,
cursed be she that bare thee; for the end of the heathen shall be dry
and desolate as the soil of the desert” (p. 58). It also explains
earthquakes by the lamentations of the Lord, who bewails the miseries
of the Jews (p. 59). If a Jew find an object lost, we will say, by a
Muslim, he must not restore it, even though he knew the proprietor.
Also, if a Gentile make any mistake in accounting with the Jew, or
leave property in his house, the latter, when not in fear of the
authorities, must rob him. At all times, in fact, the Jew should spoil
the Gentile as much as possible. If one Jew injure another, though even
his personal enemy and the greatest villain in the world, especially
if such injury be to the advantage of a Gentile, the Jew shall surely
die (chap. 388 of the Khalehah Orah Haím Meshat, one of the most
accredited parts of the Oral Law). All those present are bound to put
the denouncer to death before he can do the deed; and if he has done
it, they must remove him from this world, every Israelite in the place
contributing to pay the assassin. The oath of a Gentile or a Samaritan
cannot be taken in evidence against a Jew. If a dispute occurs between
two Israelites, they must go before their own judge.[54] It is sinful
to have recourse to foreign tribunals, and all the decisions of the
latter, when adverse to Jews, must be quashed. Although the heathen
court pass sentence according to Hebrew Law, the plaintiff or denouncer
becomes impious, sacrilegious, and religiously excommunicated, whilst
the Rabbi is bound to make him lose his cause by every possible
contrivance, even by suborning false witnesses against him. And at
last due punishment must be dealt out. The latter is not a Biblical
command, but it results from the commentaries on the Talmuds. When
these works were written Muhammadanism did not exist; Muslims therefore
are now included amongst the Gentiles. They are not, however, like the
Christian idolaters.

In tract Keritoth (or Excision, the seventh of the fifth order,
Kodashim) the learned R. Moshe Meimunah, after describing a fight
between two bulls,[55] the one belonging to a Jew, the other to an
Egyptian, declares (p. 36) that, in case of a dispute between men of
these different races, the Hebrew, if in the right, should go to the
local authority and say, “See, such is the Law!” But he must not do so
if he prefer the Jewish tribunal. The Rabbi adds that no one should be
astonished at such a condition, for all who do not keep the revealed
commandments are not men, but beings whose sole purpose upon earth is
to serve men. Tract Muad Katon (Little Feast, eleventh of the second
order) forbids Jews to salute Gentiles unless in fear of them, and even
then never twice. When it was observed to the author that many Scribes
had so done, he replied that doubtless it was with some such mental
reservation as this, “I salute thee, A., son of B.,” meaning the Rabbi
who had taught the speaker to read the Scriptures (p. 62). El Ruzich,
in his commentaries on the Talmudic tract Abodah Zarah, speaking of
Hebrew accusers of Hebrews and eaters of flesh not ceremonially killed,
declares their death to be a necessity.

At this point it may be advisable to offer a short view of the two
Great Schools of the Holy Land which have influenced Jewish thought in
Christian times. These are, first, that of Tiberias, whence issued the
Talmud of Jerusalem, followed by the Talmud of Babylon; and, second,
the School of Safed, which rendered itself remarkable by the extreme
opinions of its commentaries and glossaries.[56]

We read in a Jewish writer (M. J. Cohen on the authority of the
Talmud, _Archives Israëlites_, 1841)[57]: “When after two hundred
years of energetic struggles against an empire which was fated to be
universal the Hebrew race found its political nationality in peril,
the first want felt was to lighten, as much as possible, the bonds
of personality, so as morally to preserve by identity of belief that
unity which dispersion was about to dissolve. And the plan which at
once suggested itself was to determine, by an invariable method, the
principles of the Mosaic Law, to develop their sense, and to fix their
interpretation.

“But in those times, if I may so speak, the lights of Israel were
eclipsed; ages had elapsed since the voices of the prophets had
delivered to this people the Oracles of God; and divine inspiration,
the heightening of the national faculties by supernatural means,
seemed to have returned to its home in heaven. Moreover, after the
destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, all authority
had disappeared with national power, and, social organization no longer
existing, man could not magisterially impose his opinion upon others.
The only rational step in this state of things was to assemble all the
Israelites, or those who represented them, and to form a sovereign
synod.”

The Jewish Senate, Sanhedrin ([Greek: Συνεδριον: Synedrion]),[58] or
national council, was first transferred from the ruins of the Holy
City to Javneh, and after many removes to Saffúríah,[59] the Sephores
which in the days of Josephus was ever faithful to the Romans. Finally,
about the middle of the second century, during the reign of Antoninus
Pius (A.D. 138-161), it was transferred to Tiberias, another city
of Galilee. Rabbi Yahúda, universally known as ha-Kodesh, or the
saint, was the Nashi (Prince) of his nation and the President of the
Sanhedrin. He lived at Saffúríah, where there is a cave through which
the Roman Emperor, whose reign in history is almost a blank, used to
visit him from Tiberias; this tunnel is now blocked up. The modern Jews
residing in Galilee are not agreed whether the Great Rabbi died at
Saffúríah, or at Túrean, a neighbouring village, where two large caves
exist; but neither of them shows traces of a tomb. When this Prince of
Israel died, it was Friday evening, and the sun stood still whilst his
corpse was carried to its distant grave, lest even the body might break
the Sabbath.[60]

“The work of this Sanhedrin consisted in committing to paper that which
had before been entrusted to memory and had perpetuated itself by
tradition--the jurisprudence of the Jews, the various interpretations
of the Law by the principal doctors, and the rules of man’s duty; in
other words, all that was called the Oral Law. Thus the Synod began
by transgressing a principle of Israelitism, which until those days
had decreed that the supplementary code should never be written, and
hence indeed its vulgar name. In this point the Œcumenical Council
followed the example of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), the adopted father
of Antoninus Pius, who also commanded the jurist Salvius Julianus to
draw up the _Edictum Perpetuum_, or fixed code, and the _Responsa
Prudentium_, which before his time formed an unwritten corps of
doctrine embodying legal decisions and precedents. The book, which
was compiled by R. Yahúda, with the adhesion of the Jewish majority,
received the name of Mishnah, ‘doubling,’ or repetition of the Law,
and its principles became obligatory upon all men.” The great work was
completed, according to some, about A.D. 119; David Ganz prefers A.D.
219, or a short time before the compiler’s death; whilst others contend
that R. Yahúda collected the principles of the code, and that the
nation accepted it by order of Gamaliel, his son, and successor in the
princely dignity of _Nashi_ and presidency of the Sanhedrin;[61] “and
others again make it of still later date. At all events, it is the most
ancient composition known to the Jews after the Law and the Prophets.”

By almost imperceptible degrees the notes and commentaries upon this
text grew to formidable proportions, and became a special science,
whose technical name, found in the Book of Chronicles (2 xiii. 22 and
xxiv. 27), is Midrash, from darash; in Arabic, dars, a lesson. Of the
innumerable methods of studying these Holy Writs, the three principal
are embodied in the Persian Paradís, the Arabic Firdaus, and the
Greek [Greek: Παραδεισος: Paradeisos], written Semitically without
vowels PRDS, and the mysterious letters were assumed mneumonically as
the initial of a technical word. Thus P (Peshat, the simple rendering
of words) recorded the elementary law of Talmudic exegesis, “No verse
of Scripture practically admits any sense but the literal sense,”[62]
although in a different or familiar signification it may be explained
in a host of ways. R (Remiz, the Arabic Ramz, a secret, intimation,
insinuation, or suggestion of meaning) illustrates certain letters
and signs apparently superfluous and explained only by tradition;
in a more general manner, it gave rise to a _memoria technica_ and
a stenography resembling the Roman _Notaricon_. Points and notes
were added to the margins of manuscripts, and thus was founded the
Massorah (tradition), or diplomatic conservation of the text, intended
to preserve its purity. D (Derush, illustration) was the familiar
application of historical, traditional, anecdotical, allegorical, and
prophetical sayings to the actual state of events; it was a sermon
aided by ethics, logic, poetry, parable, proverb, apologue, and the
vast mass of legendary lore known as the Hagadah (plural Hagadoth), as
opposed to the Halakah,[63] or dogmatic part--perhaps it was suggested
by the New Testament. Finally, the fourth and last, S (Sod, secret,
mystery), included the mystical and esoterical sciences of theosophy,
metaphysics, angelology, and a host of supernatural visions, brilliant
and fantastic. It borrowed with impartial hand from the magic of Egypt,
the myths of Hermes Trismegistos, the works of the Platonists and
Neo-Platonists, and the labours of the Christian Gnostics. Few were
initiated into “the Creation,” or “the Chariot,” as it was called,
alluding to the vision of Ezekiel; yet its attractions were such that
at last “Paradise” was confined to this special branch of esoteric
science, even as later in Gnosticism it came to signify the Spiritual
Christ.

Yet the Talmudic authors lay down the principle that their decisions
are in no wise absolute, but can always be modified by a power equal
to that which lay them down.[64] Their sole object was to fix the
sense and the rules of Written Law; for as Moïse de Coucy says in his
_S'mag, or Great Book of Precepts_: “If the interpretation of the Oral
Law had not been added to the Written Law, the whole code would have
been obscure and unintelligible, because Holy Writ is full of passages
which seem to oppose and contradict one another.” Rambáni Maimonides
of Cordova declares (Introduction to his _Guide_, Vol. I., p. 29):
“Thus we find continually written in the Talmud, ‘The beginning of the
chapter differs from the end’; and the explanation is given, ‘Because
the first part emanates from such-and-such a doctor, and the last from
another.’ Furthermore, we read, ‘Rabbi Yahúda the Holy approved the
opinion of that doctor in that case, and merely records the opinions
of this doctor in this case, without even naming him.’” The following
formulas are also frequent: “To whom belongs this anonymous assertion?”
R. “To A. B., the doctor!” and, “To whom belongs our paragraph of the
Mishnah?” R. “To such-and-such a person!”

To resume the history of the Talmud.

Some years after the publication of the Mishnah in the third century
(A.D. 230-270), R. Yochanan, who for eighty years had been President
of the Sanhedrin, undertook a commentary on the text like the Sharh,
which accompanies the Arabic Matu. Aided, it is said, by Rab and
Samuel, the disciples of Gamaliel, son of R. Yahúda, he produced about
A.D. 390 a book which, united with the Mishnayoth, received the title
Talmud (doctrine or learning) of Jerusalem, though written at Tiberias.
The product of the Schools of Palestine, it was composed in the West
Aramæan tongue; and it calls the Mishnic text by the simple name of
Halakah (rule), or dogmatic part. The School of Tiberias flourished
apparently in the days of St. Jerome, and passed into oblivion during
the fourth and early fifth centuries.

In A.D. 367 Askhi, President of the Babylonian Sanhedrin, whilst
teaching the Mishnah, annually commented upon two tracts of that work,
which, being concise, and as it were axiomatic, like all books that
announce legislative principles, required explanation of the author’s
exact intention. He was aided by the opinions of many doctors omitted
in the Mishnah, either those who died before R. Yahúda the Holy had
finished his labours, or the many who followed during the ensuing
years. In order that his learning might not be lost to the world,
he compiled and transcribed thirty-five tracts, and died A.D. 427.
His son Mar and Marimon his disciple continued the work, and after
seventy-three years appeared the Gemara, complement or conclusion. It
was written in the Eastern Aramæan tongue, and it corresponds with the
Hasheyah of Arabic standard works.

The Mishnah and the Gemara, now forming a single code, became known
to history as the Talmud Babli (of Babylon); and when _the_ Talmud is
mentioned, the second work, being the fuller and the more minute, is
always meant.[65] Presently the Talmudists separated into two great and
rival schools in ante-Christian times: that of Hillel,[66] remarkable
for his learning, his humility, and his charity, extending even so
far as to forbid usury (Tract Baba Metzin, folio 17^b); and that of
Shammai, inflexible in principles and often inclining to severity.

Both of these voluminous compositions are essentially a _corpus juris_,
to be compared with the _Edictum Perpetuum_ and _Responsa Prudentium_,
with the _Pandects_, the _Novellæ_,[67] and the _Institutes_. They
form an encyclopædia of Judæan Law, divine and human, national
and international, laical and ecclesiastic, civil and criminal; a
doctrinal, judicial, and sentential digest, dealing in exegesis and
hermeneutics; a huge compilation of what Muslim divines call Fatwá,
or decisions upon legal subjects; and a thesaurus of ceremonial
observances borrowed from the Oral Law and the traditions of the heads
of schools from Rabbi Gamaliel downwards.[68] Composed in the East,
that classic land of the supernatural, they abound in Hagadistic
matter, wild and picturesque legends sometimes inculcating moral
lessons, like the four nocturnal spectres Lilíth, Naama, Aguerith,
and Mahala,[69] at other times puerile tales of the great angels
Patspatsiah, Tashbach, Hadarniel, Enkatham, Pastam, Sandalphon,
Shamsiel, and Prasta. Its historical, topographical, ethnographical,
and geographical information must be received with the greatest
reserve, coming from authors of different ages and of several values.
For instance, the Gemara (Sanhedrin, vi. 2) informs us that our Lord,
having vainly endeavoured during forty days to find an advocate,
was sentenced, and on the 14th of Nisan was stoned and afterwards
hanged. It is a storehouse of curious allusions to the products of
various countries, the occupations of races, agriculture, gardening,
professions and trades, arts and sciences, connubial relations, manners
and customs, the interiors of houses, and even dress. It portrays the
cosmopolitanism and the luxury of Rome in her later days, thereby
filling up the somewhat meagre sketches of the post-classical school.
We find in the Mishnah allusions to the fish of Spain, the apples of
Crete, the cheese of Bithynia, the zythus,[70] lentils, and beans of
Egypt, the citrons of Greece, the wines of Italy, the beer of Media,
the garments of India and Pelusium, the shirts of Cilicia, and the
veils of Arabia.

“At five years of age,” says the Mishnah, “let the child begin to
study the Scriptures; let him continue so doing till the age of ten,
when he may begin to study the Mishnah; at the age of fifteen let him
begin the Gemara” (T. Aboth, chap. v.). This passage in the “vast work
or ocean of learning,” as some call it, could not but be distasteful
to Christianity. The tone adopted in speaking of the Almighty is
anthropomorphic and anthropocentric in the extreme.[71] God spends a
fourth part of the day in studying the Law. At every watch of the night
He sits and roars like a lion, saying, “Woe is Me that I have laid
desolate My house and burned My sanctuary, and sent My children into
captivity among the nations of the world” (Berachoth). He plays for
three hours every day with the leviathan. And bear in mind there are
far more objectionable representations than these in the writings of
the Rabbis. It revels more than any known faith in the degradation of
women; the Rabbinic court declares women “disqualified by the Law from
giving testimony”; the Talmud excludes them from the public worship
of God, and teaches that they are under no obligation to learn the
revealed will of their Creator,--peculiarly antipathetic doctrines to
those who believe in an Immaculate Virgin and in a St. Mary Magdalen.
Moreover, the large space given to cursing the Jew and the non-Jew, and
to the unhallowed practices of magic and necromancy, the summoning and
conversing with devils and spirits, the advocacy of astrology, charms,
and philters, served as a pretext for Pope and Inquisition to attack
it. In A.D. 553 Justinian proscribed it by Novella 146 as a “tissue of
puerilities, of fables, of iniquities, of insults, of imprecations, of
heresies, and of blasphemies”; it was destroyed by Gregory IX. in A.D.
1230; it was burnt in Paris by Innocent IV. (A.D. 1244); and it was
proscribed by Clement IV., by Honorius[72] IV., and by John XXII. The
first printed edition (Venice, 1520) saved it, and not until the third
had appeared (Basle, 1578) did it come under the eye of the censor.

In 1553 and 1555 Julius III. promulgated a proclamation against what
he called grotesquely the Talmud Gulnaroth; and this proceeding was
repeated by Paul IV. in 1559, by Pius V. in 1566, and by Clement VIII.
in 1592 and 1599.

A well-known anti-Talmudical writer remarked in 1836: “The promised
German translation of the Talmud, if ever completed, must without
any discussion overthrow Talmudism. Its exhibition in any European
language is the most fatal attack that can be made on its authority.”
This is utterly unphilosophical; the Book of Mormon, with all its
Americanisms and its internal evidences of futile forgery, confirmed
instead of destroying Mormonism. The Mishnah was translated into Latin
by Surenhusius (Amsterdam, three vols. 4^o) as early as 1698-1703, and
into German by the Chaplain J. J. Rabi (Onolzbach & Ansbach, first
to sixth part, 4^o) in 1760-1763. Without any knowledge of Hebrew
or Aramæan, those who read Latin, French and Italian, German and
English, will find in any great library--that of the British Museum
for instance--a translation of almost every part, and they may be
assured that the small remnant still untranslated contains nothing of
importance. The modern verdict is that the Talmuds are a “spotted orb,”
and that they contain two distinct elements--the sacred light in the
true interpretation of the word of God, and the purely human darkness
in its folly and infirmity. But it does not confirm the following
assertion of the _Initiation of Youth_ (Rabbi Ascher): “The Talmudical
writers enjoin upon us to treat Christians as our own brethren in every
social matter.”[73]

The second great Rabbinical School arose at Safed, also a city of
Galilee, and rising within sight of Tiberias. Benjamin of Tudela
(A.D. 1163) visited the tombs of Hillel and Shammai, “near Merún,
which is Maron,” supposed to be the Beth-maron of the Talmud; but he
says nothing about Jews being in Safed, then a fortress held by the
Templars. “The city set upon a hill” is also ignored by travellers
of the next three hundred years, and appears in history only about
the sixteenth century.[74] It then became the great centre of Jewish
learning--in fact, another Jerusalem. The children of Israel dwelt
there in great numbers, and had a vast Khan, a square lead-roofed
fortress, where many of them lived, and which contained a fine
synagogue. Besides the schools in which the sciences were taught,
they counted eighteen synagogues, distinguished by the names of the
several nations which possessed them, as the Portuguese, Spanish,
Italian, and others. The printing-press, of which there are remnants
at the north-eastern village Ein el Zeitún, issued many volumes, now
becoming exceedingly rare because so much in request amongst European
bibliophiles. The College (Madrásh) of the Rabbis still remains, a
two-arched hall, of which no part is ancient except the eastern side.
All the rest has been shaken down by earthquakes, which are supposed to
destroy the city as each Sabbatical year comes round. In the cemetery
below the settlement are the whitewashed graves of Joseph Caro, of
Shalomon Alkabez, and of other notables.

The peculiar ferocity of the Safed School resulted partly from the
domination of the sons of Ishmael, which, however mild, is everywhere
distasteful to the children of Israel.[75] If “Esau hateth Jacob
because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him,” Jacob
returns the hate with at least equal heat, adding fear and contempt--he
would willingly, to use the words of Rashi, “blot out Esau and his
seed.” But doubtless the harshness and cruelty which distinguished
its doctors must be explained by the nature of the place and its
surroundings. Situated in the bleak and windswept, the stony and barren
highlands of Upper Galilee, shaken by earthquakes, and exposed to
terrible storms, Safed is one of the least amene sites in the whole
of Syria. The climate is ever in extremes, the water is hard and full
of constipating lime, the earth is cold and fruitless, and the people
are crafty and cruel as Simeon and Levi. After a few days’ residence,
strangers complain of sickness, cramps, and malaise, and their only
desire is to escape from the gloom and seclusion of this town upon the
hillside. Even the Muhammadans contrast the facile manners of their
own women at soft and low-lying Tiberias with the asperity and the
violence of those who inhabit the upland settlement. “Safad fasad”
(Safed ever giveth trouble) is the jingling saw of the neighbourhood,
and it contains abundant truth. The amount of intrigue and plotting
is excessive even in a Syrian settlement, the charges bandied about by
men against one another are atrocious--this doctor is a murderer, that
scribe is an adulterer, and the third is a swindler and a thief. If
the visitor were to believe half what he hears, he would find himself
in a den of brigands. That not a few of these charges are founded on
fact may be gathered from what travellers have printed concerning
certain sons of this Holy City, some of which are too revolting for
publication. The rich divines are accused of shamelessly embezzling
the Halúkah, large sums sent from Europe for the maintenance of the
community; and the poor are ready with complaints upon the most
trivial occasions--the breaking of a hen’s leg sends them on a hurried
official visit to their Vice-Consuls. It is not too much to say that
if Safed again produced a theological school, it would rival in its
narrow bigotry and peculiar ferocity that which disgraced the sixteenth
century.

The Talmud had spoken its last upon the interpretation of the Torah,
it had closed the discussions which arose from the sacred text, and
it had exhausted the traditional lore and the rules established by
the Rabbis of Palestine and Babylon till the fifth century after the
Christian era. Still, the Talmud itself required after the course of
ages to be interpreted, and this gave rise to a variety of mediæval
abridgments and to a vast series of glosses and commentaries. The more
modern Rabbis especially resolved that no uncertainty should rest upon
the Halakah, or doctrinal part of the work, and they strictly applied
themselves to codify the whole body of the Talmud.

To cite only the best-known names. We have to begin with Rabbi Ishaz
al Fasi, who first resumed the Talmud, and who had the boldness
to expel from the text everything not strictly bearing upon the
discussion. Then came the celebrated Maimonides of Cordova (A.D.
1150), whose Yad ha-Hazaka (Hand of Power) is a compendium of Talmudic
lore valued almost as highly as the original. He was followed by
Ascheri, a powerful dialectician, who knew how to conciliate with the
Talmudic argument the observations of the Tossaphists, or Glossarians,
represented before and after him by Rashi, Rabbenu Tam, Coucy, and a
host of others. His son succeeded him, and made a new attempt at a
codification, in which the opinions of Ascheri naturally occupied the
place of honour.

About this time rose the Safed School. The first and greatest
commentator was the Rabbi by some called Rabanu Jacob Be-Rab, an exile
from Spain, and subsequently Chief Rabbi of Fez and Safed, where, after
long teaching, he died in A.D. 1541. This Baal ha-Turim (Lord of the
Books), as he is called, wrote four works, which, being considered in
the light of “religious laws,” were known as the Diním. The first
of the Arbah Turim, Orach Chaüin (Urah ha-Yiim, the Way of Life),
treats of observances enjoined upon the Jews. The second is Joré Déah
(Yurah daah, the Teacher of Knowledge); it describes the ceremonious
observances of butchering, eating, making vows, circumcising, and so
forth. The third is Eben ha-Azar, the Stone of Assistance (to mankind).
And in the fourth, Hoshen Mishpat (Breastplate of Judgment), law, civil
and criminal, is discussed.

The School of this commentator was kept up by Moses of Trani in Apulia,
who lectured during fifty-four years to A.D. 1580, the year of his
death. The next name of repute was R. Joseph Karo, or Caro, a Jew of
Spanish descent, born at Constantinople, who died in A.D. 1575. He
was a voluminous writer. In the Shoulkhan Aroukh, a code of religion
adopted universally by the Israelites, he analyzed and resumed the
opinions of his predecessors. His _magnum opus_ is the Beth Yúsúf
(House of Joseph), in four folios, first printed at Venice, and
repeatedly republished; it consists of commentaries upon the four Diním
of Rabanu Jacob, on the Talmudic writings of the R. Ishaz al Fasi, and
on the labours of Rabbino Yakúb ben Rosh, not to be confounded with
Rashi the glossarian. The fourth great name is R. Shalomon Alkabez,
also of Constantinople, who wrote in A.D. 1529, and who was still
living in A.D. 1561. This theologian has left the worst name amongst
the Christians, whom he seems to have hated from his very heart. A
pupil and colleague of Caro and Alkabez was Moses of Cordova, the most
famous Cabalist since the days of Simeon ben Jochai; he died Chief
Rabbi of Safed in A.D. 1570. Moses Galanté, a native of Rome, was
somewhat later, dying in A.D. 1618. But the academy was not indebted
for its fame to strangers alone; Samuel Oseida and Moses Alsheikh, both
natives of Safed, contributed to its celebrity during the sixteenth
century. The latter died between A.D. 1592 and 1601.

Of the mediæval Rabbis and their successors generally, it may be
observed that the later the school the more prominent became its
bigotry and violence. This is easily explained. Anna Comnena[76]
describes the Crusades, which were guided by a giant and a goose, with
truly Eastern relish, as having left a “very admirable mound of bones,
high, deep, and broad.” But they left something more--a tradition which
presently enabled the Christians to recover power in the Holy Land,
and their abomination of the Jew inspired him with kindred sentiments.
Nor can we wonder that the later and more fanatical writings are
preferred by the Israelites to those of the earlier schools. Religious
exclusiveness and the ambition of being a peculiar people, set apart
from and raised above the rest of humanity, appeal to the heart of
every man through the sure channel of his passions. And thus in the
youngest faith of the world we find the same phenomenon as in one of
the most ancient--the Book of Doctrines and Covenants is read at Salt
Lake City whilst the Book of Mormon is neglected.

R. Jacob Be-Rab, in the second part of his Joré Déah (Yurah daah),
asserts that it is unlawful to draw a Gentile out of a well into which
he may have descended or fallen. He also declares that the scrupulous
Jewish physician who thoroughly conforms to Talmudic Law will not
attend a Gentile without honorarium, because this will be his sole
reward. He may do so gratuitously, if he wishes to study medicine by
that means; but he should usually kill such patients whilst pretending
to cure them. This, however, must be attempted only when there is no
chance of detection. R. Joseph Caro of Safed, one of the most pestilent
of that School, in his commentary upon the Way of Knowledge, enables
the doctor to do additional harm by calling Gentile fees Kashmad, that
is to say, the wages of sin--a term applied to the price of a woman’s
honour; and in speaking especially of Christians, he declares that if
the Jewish physician takes his fee without poisoning them it is as
the gift to the wicked woman. On the other hand, should the mediciner
be unwilling to be paid, he must absolutely poison his patient. He
also forbids the doctor who has not thoroughly studied the healing art
to attend one of his own faith, lest his ignorance cause death;[77]
but he may practise amongst all others, because if he kill them it is
lawful and no matter (commentary of Gittin, the sixth tract of the
third order). Others declare that the Hebrew physician must not treat
a stranger even for fees; but if he fear the Gentile, and the latter
know him to be a Jew, he may do so for money. Rubbi argues the question
by reference to the Gittin, in which it is related that R. Richmi bin
Askhi had prepared a dose for a stranger; he explains that the drug may
have been given by way of experiment, or for the purpose of study.

The Safed School continued its labours into the seventeenth century,
and Quasimus (writing about A.D. 1625) speaks of it [Safed] as
inhabited chiefly by Hebrews, who had their synagogues and schools, and
for whose sustenance contributions were made by the Jews in other parts
of the world. After that it gradually sank under the oppression of the
Muhammadans, who probably took the place by degrees.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Mount Moriah (of appearance), afterwards the site of Solomon’s
Temple. Certain modern writers, especially Mr. Mills (_Nablous and the
Samaritans_), would identify Mount Gerizím of Shechem with Moriah; but
the most superficial consideration of the distance to be marched and
the time required proves the theory to be absurd.

[35] This institution has even distinguished the Jew from the other
civilized nations of antiquity, the Egyptians and Assyrians, the Hindus
and Guebres, the Greeks and Romans, who ignored it. By this part of
his cosmogony Moses evidently intended to inculcate the dignity of
labour and the hygienic necessity of rest. But the Rabbis and Doctors
exaggerate all things, and they have still, like the vulgar Hebrew, to
learn that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The
Targum of Onkelos (Dr. Etheridge’s Translation. London: Longmans, 1862)
makes the Creator rest and be refreshed in all points like a wearied
human being. Dr. McCaul and a host of writers have enlarged upon the
vexatious, barbarous, and inhuman Sabbatical ordinances engrafted by
the Talmudists upon the Mosaic Law.

[36] Usually the Sabbatical journey is reckoned at one Mil (mile); but
it varies according to circumstances, the permitted extremes varying
between seven furlongs and two miles. Probably the ancient Jews had a
longer and a shorter measure, in the latter the pace being half of what
it was in the former; the longer mile, equal to 2,000 paces, = 5,000
feet = 1,666 yards, or 98[78] yards shorter than the English statute
measure, whilst the Roman was 142 yards less than ours.

[37] The Sabbath services throughout the world are four--namely, (1)
Prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings in the synagogue on Friday after
sunset; (2) Saturday morning prayers, rather later than usual that
men may take a longer rest; (3) Ha-phatorah, the conclusion after the
morning prayer, reading sections of the Law and the Prophets; and (4)
Ha-musaph, or the additional prayers, consisting of portions of the
Pentateuch referring to the sacrifices of the Mosaic Dispensation which
are now no longer lawful. The style of cantillation is complicated as
the reading of the Koran, and would be called a “neuma”[79] in the
mediæval music of the Christian Church. And the chant annotation, which
is shown in every Old Testament, offers a host of difficulties. As a
rule the services are the reverse of impressive. They are in a dead
language “not understanded of the people”; they are hurried over with
unseemly haste; and, as in most ceremonial faiths, the profuse outward
observances contrast strangely with the apparent absence of religious
feeling.

[38] “A Gentile who employs himself in the Law is guilty of death. He
is not to employ himself except in the seven commandments that belong
to the Gentiles. And thus a Gentile who keeps a Sabbath--though it be
on one of the weekdays--if he make it to himself as a Sabbath, he is
guilty of death.” And the measure of difference between Gentile and Jew
is that, whilst the former has seven commandments, the latter has six
hundred and thirteen.

[39] Thus the Rabbinical saying is: “Every one is bound to divide the
time of his study into three--one-third to be devoted to the Written
Law, one-third to Mishnah, and one-third to Gemara.” Thus he gives
one-half to the Old Testament, whilst double study is assigned to the
Oral Law. The latter, which has some tangible points of resemblance
with the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church and the Sunnat of
the Muhammadans, is the unwritten code received by Moses on Mount
Sinai and transmitted inviolate by word of mouth from generation to
generation. Until after the last destruction of Jerusalem it was never
committed to writing (see _A Manual of Judaism_, by Joshua Van Oven,
Esq., M.R.C.S.L. London, 1835). It is held uninspired by all save the
Jews, and one of its bitterest enemies was the Founder of Christianity,
who, when attacking tradition, never failed to uphold the Law. One
might smile at so prodigious an assumption as this legendary system
in the total absence of historic proof. But only a few years ago a
French Grand Rabbi published a learned work to prove that the facts
can be accounted for only supernaturally. Also Dr. Adler, Orthodox
Chief Rabbi of England, declared, in a sermon preached but a few years
ago, the Written and the Oral Laws to be equally divine, and compared
the reformers with the false mother in the judgment of Solomon. These
things make us regret the total disappearance of the Sadducee or
Rationalistic School.

[40] [The fourth, omitted by Burton, is, “Tu non ruberai” according to
the Hakhám.]

[41] Arubím, or mixtures, were forbidden by the Mosaic Law (Lev. xix.
19), and were greatly extended by the Oral Law, such as grafting,
sowing different kinds of seeds in the same soil, wearing a garment of
wool and linen mixed, and so forth. The subject is copiously treated in
the nine chapters of Kilaim (Heterogeneous, or Things not to be Mixed),
the fourth tract of the first order, Seder Zeraaim (the Order of Seeds).

[42] The subject of proselytizing amongst the ancient Jews is full
of difficulties, and the object seems mostly to have been the
discouragement of converts, with a fair scheme on paper. The Proselytes
of the Gate, generally called Gerim, or strangers (“the stranger that
is within thy gates”) and properly Noachidæ (sons of Noah), were only
half Israelites. The Proselytes of the Covenant or of Righteousness
were perfect Israelites. They are still admitted under protest--men by
circumcision and immersion in water, and women by the latter rite only.
It is a question how far baptism was used in ante-Christian times, and
possibly John the Baptist merely adopted the old rite for a new purpose.

[43] This again is Scriptural. “The doctrine of Moses is not that
obedience to one command will compensate for disobedience to another,
but that disobedience to one command will make obedience to others of
none effect.”

[44] [_Sic_ Burton. The Hebrew scribe is supposed to be speaking.]

[45] Here the scribe does not explain himself. What he refers to is the
supposed system of reducing the blood to ashes.

[46] “Heretics and informers and Epicureans, who have denied the Law
or the resurrection of the dead, ... all such go down to hell, and are
judged for ever” (Rosh ha-Shanah, or Head of the Year, eighth tract of
the second order).

[47] There are three forms of excommunication--(1) the Nachri, or
simple expulsion from the synagogue; (2) expulsion accompanied with
Anathema; and (3) the same with Maranatha. The latter is composed of
two Syriac words meaning “the Lord will come,” _i.e._ in judgment.

[48] Hence, it may be added, the exceeding care of the Jews to
propitiate all those having authority.

[49] A tenet which in the hands of the Arab has become a very poetical
vision. The Muhammadan’s good deeds in this life, his works in fact,
will meet him under the form of a beautiful woman, and will lead him
over the terrible bridge El Sirat to the Gates of Paradise.

[50] Dr. McCaul (_Old Paths_, No. 5) remarks upon these and other
precautions which are numerous in the Hilchoth Rotsíh: “What an
affecting picture does this present of the Jews under heathen
domination!” We should rather ask: “What conduct on the part of the
Jews must have led to this habitual treatment by those whom they
branded with the name of idolaters?”

[51] “It is unlawful to bake or to cook on a holy day, in order to feed
Gentiles or dogs; for it is said (Exod. xii. 16), ‘That only may be
done for you.’ ‘For you,’ and not for Gentiles; ‘for you,’ and not for
dogs” (Hilchoth Yom Tov., c. i. 10). Some Rabbis go so far as to make
the Am ha-erits (son of earth, _i.e._ people of the land like the Seven
Tribes), or unlearned Jew, an abomination, a beast, whose nostrils may
be split, but who is too worthless to be slain (see Dr. McCaul, _The
Old Paths_, pp. 6, 7).

[52] Nothing is more striking to the Hebraist, or to one who has lived
long among the Hebrews, than to hear unlearned Christians perpetually
using the word (Sabbath) which can mean only Saturday to signify Sunday.

[53] The Targum of Palestine says (chap. xxv.): “He had worshipped
with strange worship, he had shed innocent blood, he had gone into a
betrothed damsel, he had denied the life of the world to come (nowhere
taught in the Law), and he had despised his birthright.”

[54] The system of the Beth-din (house of judgment) is kept up even
in the British Islands. The Chief Rabbi is called Rab or Ab Beth-din,
and he nominates his two Dayaním, or associates. Its jurisdiction is
civil, social, and religious; but its powers extend only to levying
fines and to excommunicating recusants. In Damascus the jurisdiction is
much more extended. The building is in the street of the Scribe called
by courtesy Rabbi Yakúb Perez, and half the intrigues in the city are
here hatched. The well-known Khagal of the Russian Jews is a similar
institution, not recognized by the Government, but exerting immense and
injurious power over the people.

[55] Our modern versions which use the word “ox” in such places lead to
error. The Hebrews did not castrate their cattle, and similarly their
mules and their eunuchs were imported from Egypt and elsewhere. Nothing
of this is hinted at about the bull in the most popular modern books;
so, for instance, the article “Ox” in Smith’s _Concise Dictionary of
the Bible_. And here it may be noted that if a bull killed a slave
the owner of the former paid a fine of thirty shekels to the owner
(Josephus, _Ant. Jud._, IV. viii. 36); hence possibly the sum offered
to and accepted by Judas as the value of a bought servant.

[56] For the other great centres of learning, see _Jerusalem and
Tiberias; Sora and Cordova: A Survey of the Religious and Scholastic
Learning of the Jews. Designed as an Introduction to the Study of
Hebrew Literature_. By J. W. Longmans, M.A. (London: Longmans). It is
curious to see how neglected has been the Safed School, which is most
erroneously included in that of Tiberias.

[57] Most of these remarks are taken from the Introduction to the
_Traité des Berakhoth (Benedictions) du Talmud de Jérusalem et du
Talmud de Babylone, traduit pour la première fois en Français par
Moïse Schwab, attaché à la Bibliothèque Nationale_ (Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, MDCCCLXXI.).

[58] The word clearly shows the immense effect of the Hellenic
Conquest. There were two forms of Sanhedrin--the Greater, numbering
seventy-one souls; and the Lesser, consisting of twenty-three. Both
were composed of the three orders Priests, Levites, and common
Israelites. The Greater Council claimed, and would again claim,
supreme jurisdiction over the king, the high priest, the prophets,
and the people, and “strangulation was the mode of execution for any
learned man who rebelled against their words” (Hilchoth Mamrun, i. 2).
Anti-Talmudic writers strongly object to this upstart aristocracy,
when Moses (Deut. xvii.) ordained a supreme council consisting of the
“Priests the Levites” (not the Priests _and_ the Levites), together
with the judge, or chief civil governor; the ecclesiastical element
remaining in the family of Aaron, whilst the magistracy fell to the
lot of Joshua. But when they assert, “It is quite absurd, and if
the subject were not so grave it would be ludicrous, to hear the
Rabbinists exclaiming that the Law of Moses is unchangeable, when they
themselves have changed all its main provisions and made an entirely
new religion,” the Jew may fairly retort that the Pauline modifications
extending to radical changes had the same effect upon Christianity.

[59] According to the system of Sir William Jones, this name would be
written Saffúriyeh, but not, as travellers generally do, Saffúreh or
Saffuriyyeh.

[60] The sun has often stood still in history; but how often did the
historian understand what the sun standing still really means? As
Spinoza remarked, “Not even in their dreams had they ever thought of
parhelia”; and one of his editors quotes the French drummer-boy in
Switzerland, “Nous sommes ici au bout du monde! Ici on touche le soleil
de la main!” In the twelfth century Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela found the
grave of Rabenu Hakkadosh (R. Yahúda) near “Suffurieh, the Tsippori of
antiquity,” and evidently never heard the legend, “They are buried in
the mountain, which also contains numerous other sepulchres.” In his
day Tiberias contained only fifty Jews.

[61] See Cérnach David, Editio princeps (Prague, 1592), fol. 43.

[62] Similarly the Mormons “pointedly condemn those who make the
contents of the Bible typical, metaphysical, or symbolical, ‘as if God
were not honest when He speaks with man, or uses words in any other
than their true acceptation,’ or could ‘palter in a double sense.’”
This return to Hebrew lines of thought is not a little curious, and
it may be remarked that every fresh branch put forth by the tree of
“Protestantism,” as it is called, invariably reverts more and more
to the old type. Indeed, whenever in these days we hear of a new
“religion” having been born into the world, we may determine, _à
priori_, that it is more Jewish than its predecessors. And traces of
the same operation may be found amongst the Hindu Sikhs and the Muslim
Babees.

[63] Hagadah, from Hagah, to declare or describe, to invent or imagine,
is applied to any illustration, historical or fabulous. Halakah, from
Halak, to walk, is a rule of conduct, anything prescriptive of the
peculiarities of Jewish life.

[64] See the Mishnah, fifth part, tract Edonyoth, i., §§ 5 _et seq._
This is a fair answer to the host of contradictions and the general
charge of inconsistency levelled by anti-Talmud writers against the
Oral Law, and it enables the modern Rabbi to make almost any assertion
that he pleases concerning disputed points. Thus one will find in the
Talmud that Christians should be put to death, the other that they
should be treated like brothers. This is certainly very convenient.

[65] It is still a disputed point whether the two Targums (versions or
translations of the Pentateuch) on the Pentateuch, attributed to the
proselyte Onkelos, or Ankelos, and to the Jew Jonathan bin Uzzul, were
written by contemporary students in the Rabbinical Schools of Jerusalem
within the half-century before Christ, or were worked out like the
Septuagint by the Babylonian Maturgemanin (interpreters) of the fourth
century. The later the date the better in order to account for such
Græcisms and Latinisms as Ardiphene (Rhodaphne, oleander), Polimarkin
([Greek: Πολεμαρχος: Polemarchos]), Sapuklatoría (Speculators), and
Oktaraia (Octariones, præfecti militares). In the Targum of Jerusalem
we read “a band of Saracens.”

[66] _Vie de Hillel_, par M. le Grand Rabbin Trínel (1867).

[67] [The _Novellæ_ or _Novel Constitutions_ were so called because
they were posterior in time to the _Institutes_ and other digests of
the Roman Emperors, especially Justinian.]

[68] Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder flourished about the end of the first
century. Some suppose that he added a nineteenth prayer to the Shamunah
Ashara, the “eighteen” composed by Ezra and the men of the Great
Congregation, and which is still used by the British and other Jews.
Others attribute it to Rabbi Samuel the Lesser, a disciple of Gamaliel,
whilst others make it of even more modern date.

[69] The derided myth has been amply vindicated by the Rev. John Mills
(_The British Jews_, p. 409) and by N. M. Schwab (Introduction, p.
xxviii). The latter writer would be valuable, if he could only be
impartial. Unfortunately he writes with all the animus of a Hebrew (pp.
xxxviii and xxxix), and not a few of the prejudices of a Frenchman (p.
xxvii). This is the more regrettable, as the reading public will be
wholly in his hands and he can make the Talmud say what he pleases.

[70] [It is the [Greek: ζυθος: zythos] or Egyptian beer mentioned by
Herodotus, ii. 77. Later the term was extended to the _cerevisia_ and
other beers of European nations; hence the obsolete word _zythepsary_
([Greek: ζυθος: zythos], and [Greek: εψω: epsô], to boil), a brewery.]

[71] Here, however, we can hardly find the Talmud alone guilty. Its
anthropopathisms are merely exaggerations of what is found in the books
of Moses when the Creator is subject to wrath, sorrow, repentance,
jealousy, and other human passions of the baser kind. In fact, it would
be difficult to detect in the Rabbinical ordinances anything which is
not built upon the Mosaic text; they have greatly added to the Law,
which, methinks, is their great sin in the eyes of Christians, and they
have in many cases carried it out to absurdity--_corruptio optimi fit
passima_.

[72] This Pope in A.D. 1286 wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury
directing him to have a care lest any one read a book from which all
evils flow. Pope Pius IV., when authorizing a new edition, expressly
stipulated that it should be published without the title of Talmud,
which appears to have been a kind of Shibboleth, “Si tamen prodierit
sine nomine Talmud, tolerari deberet.” Such was the terror which it
inspired in the ecclesiastical mind.

[73] An _ad captandum vulgus verdict_. It is thus modified by the next
sentence: “All the latter Gavním [luminaries of the Jewish Law] agree
that Christians are reckoned as our own brethren, and are not included
in the term Nakhrím [strangers].”

[74] Dr. Robinson, _Biblical Researches in Palestine_, iii. 331.

[75] After the second expulsion of the Templars, Sultan Bibars
repeopled Safed with a colony from Damascus, and local tradition
asserts that of these many were Kurds.

[76] [The Empress of Constantinople.]

[77] The treatment of the Jewish sick, even in these degenerate days,
is very scrupulous. When the patient is evidently moribund, not a drop
of medicine or even a drink of water must be given to him unless he ask
for it himself, lest such act hasten dissolution, and make the giver
guilty of having caused the death of a brother Hebrew.

[78] [_Sic_ Burton, but should be 94.]

[79] [The _neumes_, properly pneumes (Gr. [Greek: πνευμα: pneuma]),
_i.e._ the musical notations prevalent from the eighth to the twelfth
century, are supposed by some to represent the ancient _Nota Romana_,
though others hold them to be of Oriental origin.]



CHAPTER V

THE CONTINUITY OF TRADITION IN THE EAST


Obviously such cruel and vindictive teaching as that recounted in
the previous chapter must bear fruit in crime and atrocities. The
occurrence of such deeds explains much of what appears to have been the
mere results of superstition and greed of gain amongst semi-barbarous
peoples. From the earliest ages to these modern days, and not in one
place, but all the world over, the hatred of the Jew against the
non-Jew has been of the fiercest. Those who are so ready to admit and
deplore the mighty provocations which roused a spirit of retaliation
in the Rabbinical mind should equally make allowance for the natural
feelings of the unfortunate Gentiles and heathens when the “People of
the Synagogue” had their wicked will. In the fifth century the Hebrew
colony, which, flying from Syria and Palestine after the wars of Titus
and Hadrian, settled near Yathrib (Medina), was powerful enough to
murder the Viceroy of the Tobbaa, or Himyarite King, and to convert
to Judaism, Du-nawás (A.D. 480), one of the last of that dynasty. He
acquired the title “Lord of the Fiery Pit,” by burning alive, in a
trench filled with combustibles, thousands of the Christians of Nejerán
at the instigation of the Jews. In later times the “People of the
Synagogue” brought upon themselves a war of extermination by insulting
an Arab woman, and after the siege of Kheibar they attempted to poison
Muhammad. In A.D. 614 the Hebrews of Galilee, according to Eutychius,
joining the Persian army under Chosroes II., caused a great slaughter
of the Nazarenes. When the Holy City was captured, they bought at a
cheap rate those taken by the Persians, especially from the Greek
monastery of Mar Saba, for the sole purpose of butchering them. Even
in Abyssinia, when the Falashas, or black proselytes, established a
powerful kingdom, this quasi-Jewish race, under their King Gideon and
their Queen Judith, was a scourge to all the nations around. These
are but a few instances of the many which would fill a volume. It is
absurd to suppose with the “liberal” writers of the nineteenth century
that whole colonies have been expelled, driven away half naked, from
England and France, from Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other Christian
kingdoms; that communities were imprisoned in Ghettos, and subjected to
tumultuous and wholesale massacres; and that thousands of individual
Jews and Jewesses, old men and children, were roasted with dogs over
slow fires, were skinned alive, tortured, dismembered, and slain like
savage beasts for the mere frenzy and the ignorance of superstition,
for simply diabolical barbarity, and for clipping coin or for claiming
more than two shillings per week as interest on a loan of twenty
shillings.

We must seek for a solid cause underlying these horrible acts of
vengeance; we find ample motive in the fact that the Jew’s hand
was ever, like Ishmael’s, against every man but those belonging to
the Synagogue. His fierce passions and fiendish cunning, combined
with abnormal powers of intellect, with intense vitality, and with
a persistency of purpose which the world has rarely seen, and
whetted moreover by a keen thirst for blood engendered by defeat and
subjection, combined to make him the deadly enemy of all mankind,
whilst his unsocial and iniquitous Oral Law contributed to inflame
his wild lust of pelf, and to justify the crimes suggested by spite
and superstition. Because under the present enlightened Governments
of the West the Jews have lost much of their ancient rancour, and no
longer perpetrate the atrocities of the Dark Ages, Europe is determined
to believe that the race is, and ever has been, incapable of such
atrocities. The conclusion is by no means logical. We have seen them
even now repeated in the Holy Land, and presently we shall see that
they are still not unknown to Western Europe, Asia Minor, and Persia.

And what can we expect from a system which teaches men to believe and
to act as follows?[80] “A tradition of the Talmud says (Talmud, Book
Baba Kama, Chapter Haggozel) if an Israelite and a Gentile come before
thee to judgment, if thou canst absolve the Israelite according to the
Jewish Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is our way of judging.’ But if
thou canst absolve him by Gentile Law, absolve him, and say, ‘This is
your way of judging.’ But if not, then they are to come upon him with
cunning frauds. R. Samuel says the error of a Gentile is also lawful.
For, behold, Samuel bought a piece of gold for four small coins, and
added one more (that he might go away the sooner, and not perceive
the fraud). Chahana bought a hundred and twenty casks of wine for the
price of a hundred; he said, ‘My trust is in thee.’ So far the Talmud.
From these and similar passages Jews infer that they may and ought to
deceive Christians and others who are not Jews. Thus also from other
passages they infer that they may and ought to kill Christians, of
which the following example is found in the book Mechilta: Exod. xiv.
7, _And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of
Egypt_. From whom did he take them? If you say from the Egyptians, is
it not said already, Exod. ix. 6, _And all the cattle of Egypt died_?
If you say Pharaoh, then there is a difficulty; for it is said already,
ix. 3, _Behold, the hand of the Lord shall be upon thy cattle_. But if
you say they were from the Israelites, it is said already, x. 26, _Our
cattle shall go with us_. From whom then were they? It is plain that
they must have been from those who feared the word of the Lord. Hence
we learn that those of the servants of Pharaoh who feared the word of
the Lord were a stumbling-block to Israel, and hence R. Simeon ben
Jochai says, ‘Slay thou the best amongst the Gentiles, and of the best
of serpents bruise the head.’[81] Thus far the Talmud; and by this they
mean to say, that as of serpents he especially is to be killed that is
the greatest and best of its kind, so Christians are to be dealt with
in the same way. For killing Christians and throwing their children
into pits, and even for killing them when they can do it secretly, they
derive an argument from that which is said in the book Abodah Zarah,
Chapter En Maamidin: ‘As to Gentiles and robbers, and those that tend
small cattle, they are neither to be helped out of a well nor to be
thrown into it. But heretics and informers and apostates are to be
thrown in, but not to be helped out.’ The commentary of Rashi says:
‘Heretics mean the priests of idols; informers mean calumniators who
betray the wealth of their brethren into the hands of the Gentiles.’
R. Shesheth says: ‘If there be a step in the pit, let him find an
excuse, and say, Lest an evil beast descend upon him.’ Rabba and R.
Joseph both say: ‘If there be a stone upon the mouth of the well, he
is to cover it, and say, I do it that the beasts may pass over it.’
R. Nachman says: ‘If there be a ladder in the well, he is to take it
away, and say, I wish to get down my son from the roof.’ Thus far the
Talmud. Thy prudence, O reader, may perceive that the Talmud, which so
perniciously teaches them to lie and to kill Christians, is not the law
of God, but the figment of the devil.”

We can hardly be surprised, after reading such atrocious doctrines,
at what history tells us concerning the Jews, their crimes, and their
condemnations. For instance:

In A.D. 419, according to Socrates (_Eccles. Hist._, Lib. VII., chap,
xvi.), some Jews of Inmestar, between Chalcis and Antioch, as a drunken
frolic, tied a Christian child[82] upon a cross and mocked it, and
that, hurried on in their wickedness, they afterwards scourged it until
it died.

In A.D. 560 a Jew was stoned for carrying away and profaning an image
of the Saviour. The same happened at Odessa in A.D. 1871, where the
Hebrews were charged with stealing the image of the “miraculous Madonna
of Kutperova.”

About A.D. 787 the Jews of Beyrut repeated the offence. The result was
the conversion of almost all their number, and the consecration of
their synagogue by the bishop.

A.D. 1010. Massacre of the Jews in France.

A.D. 1017. Certain Jews beheaded by order of Pope Benedict at Rome.

A.D. 1135. The Jews crucified a boy at Norwich. According to
the general report, they hired a Christian lad aged twelve as a
leather-sewer, and converted him into a Paschal offering; they placed
a bit in his mouth, and after a thousand outrages they crucified him,
and pierced his side in order to mock the Redeemer’s death. The corpse
was borne in a sack to be burned outside the town gates; but a surprise
caused the murderers to fly, leaving the remains hanging upon a tree.

A.D. 1166. The Jews at Ponthosa crucified a lad aged twelve.

A.D. 1185. For similar outrage upon a girl and others, King Philip
Augustus confiscated the goods of the Jews, and banished them from his
realms in the April of the following year.

A.D. 1189. The Jews were massacred at London and in other parts of
England.

A.D. 1190. The Jews were massacred at York.

A.D. 1250. The Jews of Saragossa nailed a child named Dominic to
the wall in the form of a cross, and then pierced his side with a
spear. During the same century those of Toledo also killed a Christian
youth. According to the _Cronica Serafica_ (della Vita di S. Francesco
d’Assisi, Opera del Padre Damiano Cornejo, 1721, Lib. I., chap, i.),
the Jews superstitiously used the blood of Christians in child-birth,
and sent it in a dried state to China and other places, where they had
synagogues, but where worshippers of Christ[83] are not to be found.
Hence the Jews were eventually expelled from Spain and Portugal.

A.D. 1255. “Jappen,” one of the chief Jews of Lincoln, and others of
his faith, kidnapped a lad eleven years old (August 27), beat him
with rods, cut off his nose and upper lip, broke some of his teeth,
and pierced his side. King Henry III. and his Parliament at Reading
condemned the murderers to be dragged to death at horses’ heels, and
gibbeted their carcases.

A.D. 1271. The Jews of Pforzheim murdered a girl seven years old.

A.D. 1287. The Jews of Wesel murdered a boy named Werner.

A.D. 1288. The Jews of Pacherat [?] (Würtzburg) murdered a Christian,
and extracted his blood “as it were with a winepress, and which they
are said to use as a medicine.” About the same time the Jews of Munich
murdered a Christian child.

A.D. 1290. A Jew was burnt in Paris for insulting a consecrated wafer.
In the same year, during the reign of Edward I., fifteen to sixteen
thousand Jews were banished from England; nor were they allowed to
return till the days of Cromwell, the first Liberal (A.D. 1660).

A.D. 1299. Many Jews were put to death for insulting a consecrated
wafer at Roettingen of Franconia.

A.D. 1303. The Jews of Thüringen murdered a child, and were slain in
numbers.

A.D. 1306. King Philip of France was induced by a multitude of
accusations, involving magic, sacrilege, and murder, to expel the Jews
from his country, to confiscate all their goods except what was wanted
for the journey, and to forbid their return under pain of death--all
were arrested on the same day, July 22.

A.D. 1330. The Jews of Gustow in Vandalia [Pomerania] insulted a Host.

A.D. 1348-1350. The Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and
rivers, and of causing the plague which then devastated Europe. Many
were slain and thousands were driven away from Germany, where the cry
of “Hep” was first raised. At length the Papal power was compelled to
defend their lives by threats of excommunicating their destroyers.

A.D. 1379. The Jews of Belgium insulted a consecrated Host.

A.D. 1399. The same was done by the Jews of Poland.

A.D. 1468. The Jews of Toledo in Spain crucified a Christian boy.

A.D. 1475. The Jews again insulted the Host, and were expelled the
territories of the Bishop of Passau.

A.D. 1492-1498. The Jews were expelled from Spain, in consequence of
popular clamour, by Isabel the Catholic. Many retired to Portugal,
where asylum was granted to them under the conditions, first, that each
should pay a certain sum of gold for admission, and, secondly, that if
found in Portugal after a certain day, they should either consent to
be baptized or be sold for slaves. At the expiration of the appointed
time many remained. “The King therefore gave orders to take away all
their children under fourteen years of age, to distribute them amongst
Christians, to send them to the newly discovered islands, and thus
to pluck up Judaism by the roots.” This expulsion, which has been
strongly commented upon by modern historians, is still fresh in the
memory of the Jews, and an Eastern Rabbi can hardly conceal the hatred
with which even in these days he regards a Spanish official.

A.D. 1495. The Jews of Trent, by means of one of their number, a
physician, decoyed to his house, whilst the Christians were at church,
it being Maunday Thursday, a boy two years and a half old, by name
Simeon, the son of a tanner. Before the Paschal festival commenced, the
principal Jews collected in a room near their synagogue. The child,
gagged with a kerchief, was extended in the form of a cross, and was
held down by his murderers. The blood, pouring from heavy gashes, was
collected in a basin, and when death drew near the victim was placed
upon his legs by the two men, and the others pierced his body with
sharp instruments, all vying in brutality and enjoying the torture.
The corpse having been found in the Etsch river, which flows through
the city, led to the detection of the crime; the murderers were put
to death, the synagogue was razed to the ground, and a church was
built over the place where the horrid deed was done. A sculpture was
put on the Bridge Tower in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and a picture of
a “Christian Infant murdered by the Jews” was placed in one of the
galleries in the Hôtel de Ville. Of late years it has been removed,
in deference to the feelings of the Hebrew community, which, of late
years, has formed a large and important section of the commercial
population. This murder has been abundantly commented upon. Dr. John
Matthias Tiberinus, in Trent at the time, and Jacobus Philippus
Bergamensis, of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, who was then
living at the neighbouring town of Bergamo, gave accounts of it; whilst
an engraving was produced in the _Chronicles_ of John Louis Gottfried,
edited by Matthæus Merianus. On the other hand, Pietro Mocenigo, the
Doge of Venice, and his Senate asserted: “Credimus certe rumorem ipsum
de puero necato commentum esse et artem; ad quem finem, viderint et
interpretentur alii.”

A.D. 1518. The Jews ill-treated consecrated Hosts and murdered
Christian children in the Electorate of Brandenburg.

A.D. 1669 (September 25). A child was barbarously slaughtered by
one Raphael Levi, and the cause was publicly tried at Metz. The
Nuremburg Chronicle produces, in the same year, three other cases of
kidnapping--one in England and two at Fiesole. Baronio (_Raccolta delle
Cause Celebri_, p. 288, etc.) supplies many similar instances of child
stealing and murder.

M. Tustet, a Lazarist priest, used to relate what he had heard when
living at Turin from the lady who nearly fell a victim to Jewish
superstition, even in the early part of the present century. A certain
Signor Antonio Gervalon, born at Castiglione d’Osta, and settled in
business at Turin, happened, when walking with his wife Giulietta
Bonnier, to enter the Jewish quarter. This Ghetto used to be closed at
night, as in Hamburg and Frankfort. Whilst he was talking business with
one of his Hebrew acquaintances, Madame Gervalon left him, and strolled
on a short way. Suddenly she was mobbed by a crowd of Jews, who hustled
her forwards, and at last forcibly thrust her into a _souterrain_
closed by a trap-door. She was stripped to the waist, and presently
visited by two Rabbis, who, after reading their books for about half
an hour, retired, saying, _Voi dovete morire_. The husband, after the
conversation ended, followed his wife, whom all the Ghetto folk denied
having seen; and thinking that perhaps she had gone home, he returned
there to seek her, but in vain. Thence he went to various houses, till
a relative said to him in jest, “Have a care! You know how the Jews
treat us Christians.” The words struck him. He hurriedly collected
a party of policemen, and whilst these searched the Ghetto he went
about shouting, “La mia moglie! La mia moglie” (My wife! my wife!).
Though half dead with fear, the lady at length screamed a reply, and
was saved. The affair was hushed up with money, which made the Jews as
powerful at Turin as they are at Aleppo and Damascus; but the tale was
long told by the children of Madame Gervalon. In this section of the
nineteenth century the subject has passed into the domain of politics,
and is no longer submitted to reason and judgment. The Italian Liberal
denies and derides the charges, whilst the Conservatives or Retrogrades
are almost ashamed to support them.

A.D. 1811. A Christian woman disappeared in the Jewish quarter of
Aleppo.[84]

A.D. 1821. The Jews sacrificed a man at Beyrut.

A.D. 1824. The Jews of Beyrut made away with Fatallah Sayegh, an
Aleppine Muhammadan.

A.D. 1829. The Jews of Hamah murdered a Muhammadan girl, and were
expelled the city.

A.D. 1834. The Jews of Tripoli were accused of murdering an Aleppine
Christian.

A.D. 1838. The Jews of Jerusalem attempted to murder a Muhammadan.

A.D. 1839. A flask of blood passed through the Custom-house of Beyrut.

A.D. 1840. The Jews murdered Padre Tomaso and Ibrahím Amárah at
Damascus. In the same year they made away with a Greek boy at Rhodes, a
Greek boy disappeared from Corfu, and an attempt was made to murder a
Muhammadan.

A.D. 1847. The Jews crucified a Christian boy in Mount Lebanon.

A.D. 1853. The Jews of Caiffa murdered the wife of an Algerine Jew.

A.D. 1865. The Jews of Safed put to death a Spanish Jewess.

Do not these things remind us of that “generation of vipers,” certain
of the Jews, who banded together and bound themselves by a curse,
saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul?
And was not the Apostle justified in asserting, “They please not God,
and are contrary to all men”?

How vain it is, in presence of all these horrors, to quote the
testimony of Grotius, who, speaking of the Jews since the Dispersion,
says: “Et tamen tanto tempore Judæi, nec ad falsorum deorum cultus
defluxerunt, nec de adulteriis accusantur”; and, “Apud Batavos Judæi
suspecti talium facinorum non sunt.” Yet these men excommunicated
Spinoza and attempted his life because he wrote the truth that was in
him. Granting, however, that the Jews of Holland were like the mild
and unoffending Karaïtes of the Crimea and Aden, it does not follow
that all the widely parted families of the house of Israel deserve an
equally favourable verdict. At any rate, sufficient has been advanced
in these pages to open the eyes of the student and the ethnographer; it
will stand on record “until Elijah.”

FOOTNOTES:

[80] The passage is from the Pugio Fidei (Part III., c. xxii., § 22) of
the learned Raymund Martin (A.D. 1284), quoted in a pamphlet, of which
more presently.

[81] This has passed into an Arabic proverb.

[82] The annals of the world are full of reports concerning children
being kidnapped, crowned with thorns, flogged, crucified, and pierced
with sharp instruments. Of course the child is chosen because it is
more easily mastered than a man.

[83] The Chronicles are right in believing that the Jew hates the
Christian more than he does the Muhammadan. “As to those Gentiles,
who, like the Ishmaelites, are not idolaters, their wine is unlawful
to drink, but is lawful for purpose of profit, as is taught by all the
Gaons; but Christians are idolaters, and their wine, even such as has
not been used as wine of libation, is unlawful even for purposes of
profit” (Hilchoth Maakhaloth Asuroth, c. xi. 7). “Statuimus,” says the
Talmud (Order I., Dissert. 4, quoted by Lucio Ferraris), “ut quilibet
Judæus ter in die omnem Christianorum gentem ac Deum precetur ut
confundat, interimatque ipsam cum regibus et principibus suis; atque
hoc maximè faciant sacerdotes Judæorum in synagoga ter quotidie orantes
in odium Jesu Nazareni.” This curse is not ordered against Muhammadans.

[84] This skeleton list is continued in order to show chronologically
the continuity of tradition concerning atrocities and sacrilege
practised by the Jews.



II.  THE GYPSY

“A people proscribed by opinion, and doomed by the laws to opprobrium
and ignominy; a race which, driven from all liberal professions,
has been for ages, and still is, robbed of its right to hold landed
property; which, subjected to special and severe regulations, has
learned at once to obey and yet to preserve a manner of independence;
which, despite the contempt that it inspires and the hate that it
awakes and the prejudices wherewith it is received and judged, still
resists this contempt, this hatred, and finally all those causes which
ought to disunite, loosen, and annihilate the family, the race, the
nation;--such a people, I say, deserves the observer’s attention, if
only from the fact of its existence.”

                                                  JAUBERT DE PASSA.


TO THE READER

Of general works upon the subject of the Gypsies we have perhaps
enough, and more than enough; this objection, however, cannot be
urged against specialities, which still are highly desirable in every
department of “Chinganology.” I use the latter term in preference
to the French _Tsiganologie_, of which more presently, and the
“Romanology,” a term of dubious import, lately introduced into English.

I wish to place _in extenso_ before the public the following
conclusions which the study of some years has, it is hoped, justified
me in drawing with regard to the relation of the Gypsies and the Jats:

  1. The mediæval Gypsies of Europe were the last wave of Aryan
      emigration that flowed westward during the early fifteenth
      century; and this wave was possibly preceded by more than one
      similar exodus.

  2. The mediæval Gypsies show family resemblances, physical and
      moral, ethnological and linguistic, with the modern Jats, a
      highly important race, which extends from the mouth of the Indus
      to the head of the great Valley, thence ramifying over Turkistan
      and the far North.

  3. There are solid reasons for believing the Jats and the Jin-tchi
      of Tatary to be the modern representatives of the classical Getæ
      and the Goths of later days.

  4. The language of both tribes (Jat and Gypsy) is of Indo-Persian
      type, the Indian ingredient not being so much decomposed as in
      the modern varieties of Prakrit. An absolute isolation of speech,
      especial reasons for secrecy, and the fact of being oral and
      never written have preserved its purity among the Gypsies; while
      the Jats, in close contact with alien tongues, have made those
      secular linguistic changes which are familiar even to English and
      French.

  5. The most ancient name of the race is _Chingáneh_, a term still
      used in Persia and Turkey, and necessarily corrupted by the
      Arabs, who have no _ch_, to _Jingáneh_.

  6. Concerning the origin of the Gypsy article (_o--os_, _a--as_,
      etc.), which is unknown to both Sanskrit and Prakrit, the suit
      is still pending. Possibly it is original and peculiar to the
      dialect; more probably it is an European and especially a Greek
      innovation. Briefly, until we have grammatical and vocabularian
      sketches of the Central Asian and the Turkoman-Gypsy tongues, we
      are not in a position to draw conclusions.

I propose to discuss the Indian affinities of the Gypsies. I begin
with a detailed critique of the various reviews proceeding from the
prolific pen of M. Paul Bataillard, who claims the merit, such as it
is, of having first identified the Gypsies and the Jats. I end with
topographical notes on both tribes throughout their extension from the
Indus to Morocco and even to the Brazil.



Part I

NOTES ON MODERN STUDIES OF “CHINGANOLOGY”



CHAPTER I

THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GYPSIES


The following letter to the _Academy_ (March 27, 1875), which opened
the discussion between M. Paul Bataillard and its author, speaks for
itself[85]:

“In the _Academy_ of February 27, 1875, I had these words:

“‘Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, has printed some interesting
_Contributions to the History of the Gipsies_ (sic). He accepts the
view propounded by Pott,[86] as early as 1853, that the Gipsies are
closely related to the Indian Jatt (a name which the Arab historians
transform into Zott).... Dr. Trumpp[87] has already pointed out the
close resemblance between the European Gipsies and the Jatt of the
banks of the Indus.’

“I venture to hope that you will permit me to show the part taken by
myself in this question.[88] _Sindh and the Races that inhabit the
Valley of the Indus_ (London: Allen), my volume written between 1845
and 1849, and published in 1851, thus treats of the peoples of the
plains:

“‘The Jat, or as others write the word, Jath, Juth, or Jutt, was, in
the time of the Kalhorá dynasty, one of the ruling classes in Sindh.
It was probably for this reason that the author of the Tohfat el Kirám
(a well-known book of Sindhi Annals) made them of kindred origin with
the Belochis, who now repudiate such an idea with disdain. The Jat’s
account of his own descent gives to Ukayl, the companion of Muhammad,
the high honour of being his progenitor; but what class of Muslim
people, however vile, do not claim some equally high origin?

“As Játaki, the dialect peculiar to the people, proves, they (i.e.
_the Sindh division of this extensive race_) must have come from the
Panjáb, and the other districts Ubho or Báládasht, Jhang-Siyál,
Multán, and other regions dependent upon the great Country of the Five
Rivers. Driven by war or famine from their own lands, they migrated
southwards to Sebi (_Sibi_ or _Siwi, Upper Sindh_) and to the _hills_
around it. They are supposed to have entered Sindh a little before
the accession of the Kalhorá Princes, and shortly afterwards to have
risen to distinction by their superior courage and personal strength.
At present they have lost all that distinguished them, and of their
multitude of Jágírdárs, Zemindárs, and Sardárs now not a single
descendant possesses anything like wealth or rank. The principal
settlements are in the provinces of Kakrálo, Játi, Chediyo, Maniyár,
Phuláji, and Johí. [_Those of Umarkot speak, it is said, a different
dialect from the Indine Jats, and not a few migrating tribes graze
their herds on the great Delta._[89]] They are generally agriculturists
or breeders of camels, and appear to be a quiet, inoffensive race.
Throughout the eastern parts of Central Asia, the name Jat is
synonymous with thief and scoundrel.

“‘The Sindhi Jats have many different Kamus or clans, the principal
of which are the following: Babbur, Bháti, Jiskáni, Kalaru, Magási,
Mir-jat, Parhiyár, Sanjaráni, Siyál, and Solángi.’

“To this text were appended the following notes:

 “Jat^u in the Sindhi dialect means: 1. A camel-driver or breeder. 2.
 The name of a Beloch clan. Generally in the lower Indus Valley it is
 written Jat^u, and pronounced Dyat^u. It has three significations: 1.
 The name of a tribe, the Jats. 2. A Sindhi, as opposed to a Beloch;
 it is in this sense an insulting expression, and so the Beloch and
 Brahins of the hills call the Sindhi language Játhki. 3. A word of
 insult, a ‘barbarian,’ as in the expression _do-dasto Jat^u_, ‘an
 utter savage.’

 “Lt. Wood’s work shows that the Jats are still found in the Panjáb and
 all along the banks of the Indus.

 “Under the name Jat no less than four races are comprised.

“I continued:

“‘It appears probable from the appearance and other peculiarities
of the race that the Jats are connected by consanguinity with that
peculiar race the Gypsies. Of 130 words used by the Gypsies in Syria,
no less than 104 belong to the Indo-Persian class of language. The
rest may be either the remains of the barbarous tongues spoken by
the aboriginal mountaineers who inhabited the tract between the
Indus and Eastern Persia, or the invention of a subsequent age, when
their dispersion among hostile tribes rendered a “thieves’ language”
necessary. The numerals are almost all pure Persian. There are two
words, “kuri” (a house) and “psih” (a cat), probably corrupted from
the Pushtu “kor” and “pishu.” Two other words are Sindhi “mánna” for
“máni,” bread, and “húi” for “hú,” he. As might be expected from a
tribe inhabiting Syria, Arabic and Turkish words occasionally occur,
but they form no part of the groundwork of the language.’

“It was my fortune to wander far and wide, during four years of
staff service, about the Valley of the Indus; and to make personal
acquaintance with many, if not all, its wild tribes. I saw much of the
Jats, lodged in their huts and tents, and studied the camel under their
tuition. They are the best ‘Vets.’ and breeders known to that part
of the Indian Empire. My kind friend, now no more, then Colonel, and
afterwards General, Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, had a Jat in
his service; and the rough old man’s peculiarities afforded us abundant
diversion. Thus I was able to publish in 1849 the first known notice
of Játaki and its literature. The author of the famous ‘Dabistan’[90]
applies the term ‘Jat tongue’ to that in which Nánah Sháh, the Apostle
of the Sikhs, composed his Grauth[91] and other works. Throughout the
Panjáb _Jatki bút_ (‘Jat tongue’) is synonymous with the _Gunwár ki
boli_ or ‘peasants’ jargon’ of Hindustan.

“I wrote the word _J_á_t_aki with two italics. The first denotes the
peculiar Sindhi sound, a blending of _j_ and _t_; the second is the
familiar cerebral of Sanskrit and Prakrit, which survives to a certain
extent in our modern English tongue, though unknown to the Latin and
the Teutonic languages. The tribal name is _J_a_t_^u, with the short
terminal vowel which in Sindhi, as in Sanskrit, follows the consonant;
its plural, _J_a_t_á_n_, ends with a well-marked nasal.

“At that time I divided this rude race of semi-Bedawin into four great
tribes; namely:

“‘The Panjábí Jat, who is neither a Hindu nor a Hindi (Muslim). He
first appears in Indian history as a nomad, alternately shepherd,
robber, and temporary tiller of the ground. Many became Sikhs, and
did good service to Nánah Shah’s faith by their zealous opposition to
Muhammadan bigotry. As this was their sole occupation for many years,
they gradually grew more and more warlike, and at one time they were as
fighting a race as any in India. They have been identified by Colonel
Sleeman and others with the ancient Getæ and their descendants the
Goths.[92]

“‘The Jat or Dyat of the Hazárah country, Jhang-Siyál, Kach (Kutch)
Gandáva, and Sindh generally, where they may number two hundred and
fifty thousand out of a total population of one million. They are all
Muslims, and are supposed to have emigrated from the north during or
shortly after the Kalhorá accession; hence their dialect is commonly
called Belochki. In those days the Belochís were very little known to
Sindh, whose aristocracy, the Amírs, Jágírdárs, and opulent Zemindárs,
was either Sindhi or Jats. About Pesháwur “Jat” is still synonymous
with Zemindár or landed proprietor; at times, however, it is used as a
term of reproach.

“‘The third is a clan of Belochís, who spell their name with the
Arabo-Persian, not the Sindhi _j_. In the lower Indine Valley they hold
the province of Játi, and other parts to the south-east. The head of
the tribe is entitled _Malik_ (literally “King”), _e.g._ Malik Hammál
Jat.[93]

“‘The next is a wandering tribe, many of whom are partially settled
in Candahár, Herát, Meshhed, and other cities of the Persico-Afghan
frontier. They are found in Meckran; and they sometimes travel as
far as Maskat, Sindh, and even Central India. They are held to be
notorious thieves, occupying a low place in the scale of creation.
No good account of this tribe has as yet appeared; and the smallest
contributions upon the subject would be right thankfully received.’

“The fifth which must now be added is the _Jin-tchi_ of Central Asia.
These people are not, as Mr. Schuyler[94] seems to think, ‘Káfirs from
Káfiristan’; they are apparently true Jats--an idea once advanced by
Mr. Andrew Wilson of the Abode of Snow.[95]

“These tribes are looked upon as aborigines, which simply means that
their predecessors are unknown.[96]

“Such were the notices collected by me in manuscript some years before
1849. At that time the Orientalists of Europe were almost unanimous
in identifying the Gypsies with the _Nat’h_, a scattered Indian tribe
of itinerant tinkers and musicians, the ‘poor players’ of the great
Peninsula, utterly ignorant of horse-couping, cattle-breeding, and even
poultry-snatching. And the conviction still holds its ground; only
lately my erudite correspondent, Dr. J. Burnard Davis, reminded me of
it.

“Of course the humble linguistic labours of a perpetual explorer can
hardly be familiar to the professionally learned world; but I cherish
a hope that you will aid me in resurrecting my buried and forgotten
work.”

FOOTNOTES:

[85] In this reprint of the original letter the only changes are a few
verbal corrections and suppressions of the parts elsewhere enlarged
upon.

[86] The famous work _Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien_, 2 vols. 8vo
(Halle, 1844-5). It was followed by two _Nachtrags_ (which I have not
seen). The first contains a Syro-Gypsy vocabulary; and the second,
notices of their manners and customs in Turkey and other countries. See
_Zeitschrift d. Deut. Morgen. Gesell._, III., pp. 321-325, of 1849; and
_Ibid._, Vol. VII., p. 393.

[87] Dr. Ernest Trumpp’s _Sindhi Grammar_. (Trübner, 1872.)

[88] The literati of Europe form a guild into which none but members
are admitted. At times their absolute disregard of _meum_ and _tuum_,
especially when they plunder an obscure name, is a fine study of trade
morality--or its reverse.

[89] These words were afterwards added to my MS. copy.

[90] The full title is Dabistán-i-Mazáhib, or School of Faiths (not “of
Manners”): there is a translation by David Shea and Anthony Troyer for
the Oriental Trans. Fund, 3 vols. 8vo (Paris, 1843).

[91] Adi Grauth: the Sacred Book of the Sikhs.

[92] Jornandes, “De Getarum sive Gothorum Origine et rebus Gestis.”
The learned Abbate Fortis (_Dalmatia_, I. 1, § 1) includes among the
Slav peoples the Scythians, Getæ or Goths, Slavini (Slovenes), Croats,
Avars, and Vandals. Our grandfathers derived the term “Goths” from
_Gog_ (and Magog).

[93] The account given by Mr. Hughes of the Jat in Belochistan will be
found in a future page (215).

[94] _Turkistan._ (Sampson Low & Co., 1876.)

[95] _Academy_, October 14, 1876.

[96] The letter here contains a sketch of _J_á_t_aki literature in
Sindh. I have also suppressed a paragraph noticing their migration and
tribal name; both these subjects will be discussed with more detail.



CHAPTER II

THE CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD


The following letter, which bears the author’s signature and the
date Paris, May 28, 1875,[97] was the result of my communication to
the _Academy_.[98] As I had objected to my thunder being stolen by
Professor Pott and De Goeje, so M. Paul Bataillard charges me with
having purloined his artillery:

“The _Academy_ of March 27 last published an interesting letter which
only came to my knowledge a few days ago. In this letter Mr. Richard
Burton, F.R.G.S., claims the priority in identifying the Gipsies or
Tsigans with the Jat of the banks of the Indus, whose name, he adds,
is pronounced Dyat. The question has lately been treated at length
(25 pages in 8vo, almost entirely consecrated to this subject) by
Professor J. de Goeje, of Leyden, who attributes the first idea of this
identification to Mr. Pott in 1853, as is stated in the _Academy_ of
February 27, in a short article mentioning this Dutch _Contribution to
the History of the Gipsies_.

“Mr. Burton, who has wandered far and wide in the Valley of the Indus,
and has much frequented the Jats, published in 1849 a grammar of the
Játaki dialect (41 pages), which contains an interesting classification
of this race, reproduced in his letter, and, in 1851, a volume upon
Sindh--_Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus_--in
which he starts the theory of a probable relationship between the Jats
and the Gipsies, as proved in the extracts which he commences by giving
of this work.

“Allow me to claim a still earlier priority (dating from 1849), and to
begin by establishing exactly the share belonging to each.

“Professor Pott, in his great work, _Die Zigeuner_, Vol. I. (1844),
p. 62, had spoken of the tradition mentioned by Ferdoussy, by the
_Tarikh-Guzydeh_, and ‘by another ...’ that is to say, by the
_Modjmel-al-Tevarykh_, according to which Bahram-Gur, King of Persia,
had caused ten or twelve thousand musicians, designated in two at least
of these three texts under the name of _Luri_,[99] to come from India.
One or two other names, of which it is not necessary to speak, are
added to this one. (See pp. 41, 42 of my memoir, published in 1849, and
mentioned by-and-by.)

“Five years later, Professor Pott, coming back to the subject in his
article ‘Ueber die Zigeuner,’ published, as a second supplement to his
great work, in the _Zeitschrift der Deut. Morgenl. Gesellschaft_, Vol.
III., 1849, said (p. 326):

 “Concerning the tradition of which I spoke, Vol. I., p. 62, of
 the transmigration of Indian musicians into Persia, ordered by
 Bahram-Gur, and set forth in the _Shahnameh_, a tradition which is
 applied perhaps rightly to the Zigeuner, I owe to Fleischer a very
 interesting notice, and wholly unknown to me hitherto, drawn from
 _Hamza Ispahani_, Gottwaldt edition, 1834 (p. 40 of the translation
 of Gottwaldt), according to which Bahram-Gur, for the pleasure of his
 subjects, caused twelve thousand musicians, those designated by the
 name of _Zuth_, to come from India. They are called _Luri_ in the
 _Shahnameh_[100], which is a proof that Hamza did not simply copy this
 fact. But Fleischer adds what follows relative to the name of _Zuth_,
 which I have not yet met with anywhere, and which was a complete
 enigma to me: ‘The _Kamûz_ says that the _Zotth_ are a race of men
 of Indian origin, and that the true pronunciation of this word is
 _Djatt_, but that the Arabs pronounce it _Zotth_.’ (See notes 3 and 4
 at p. 43 of my memoir of 1849, concerning the rather free translation
 of this passage of the _Kamûz_.) In the French and Arabic Dictionary,
 by Ellious Bocthor, we find: ‘_Bohémien_, Arabe vagabond, Tchinghiané,
 qui dit la bonne aventure, vole, etc., is called _Zotti_ at Damascus,
 plural _Zotte_.’

“Nothing more. It is clear that, in the identification of the Djat of
India with the Tsigans, Professor Pott’s share is very small up to
the present. The great Indianist of Halle is rich enough in his own
learning to be content with what belongs to him, and the respect I
entertain for him and his kind feeling towards me form a sure guarantee
that he will not be offended at my setting forth my claim.

“I think I may say that it is I (thanks, it is true, to M. Reinaud)
who first treated the question. I had published, in 1844, in the
_Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes_, a rather long memoir upon the
_Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe_ (the _tirage à part_, which is
long ago exhausted, has 59 pages octavo). In 1849 I contributed to
the same collection a second paper upon the same subject, examining
especially Eastern Europe, and establishing for the first time that the
Gipsies were in this region at an epoch far anterior to the date (about
1417) of their appearance in the West. I may add, incidentally, that
nearly all those who have since spoken of the appearance of the Gipsies
in Europe have done little more than draw upon these two memoirs,
without always exactly saying what part belonged to me, so that I have
often had the annoyance of seeing such or such an author, Francisque
Michel more especially, mentioned afterwards in third-hand notices
as the original source of what I had written. Now my second memoir
(_Nouvelles Recherches sur l’Apparition des Bohémiens en Europe_, 48
pp. in the _tirage à part_, Paris, 1849: Franck, rue de Richelieu, 67)
ends with an ‘Additional Note’ of ten very compact pages, the principal
object of which is precisely to identify the Gipsies and the Indian
Djath.

“In this note, or appendix, I begin by collecting and giving, in
French, in order that they may be compared, the accounts that Professor
Pott had only pointed out, relating to the ten or twelve thousand
musicians that Bahram-Gur, King of Persia (420-440 of our era), had
sent for from India, that is to say, the tradition related by Ferdoussy
in the _Shahnameh_ (about 1000), by the _Modjmel-al-Tevarykh_ (about
1126), by the _Tarikh-Guzydeh_ (about 1329, for this last I have not
been able to give the text), and lastly, by Hamza Ispahani, the Arabian
author whom Professor Fleischer had just made known to Professor
Pott, and who is the oldest of all, since he belongs to the tenth
century, while Professor Pott supposed him to have been posterior to
Ferdoussy. It is to be remarked that Hamza mentions the descendants of
the twelve thousand musicians as still existing in Persia in his time
under the name of _Zuth_, and that Ferdoussy says the same of the ten
thousand _Luri_, whom he represents as vagabonds and thieves. But the
new and important point is the name of _Zuth_ given to them by the
Arabo-Persian author of the tenth century; and it is here, as I remark
in my work (p. 42 of the _tirage à part_), ‘that the real interest
commences.’

“I again find this name (p. 44) under the form of _Djatt_ and _Djatty_
in a fifth account of the same matter by the Persian Mirkhond
(fifteenth century); and, after having remarked that the same name is
given by the Kamûz under the form _Zotth_ as the Arabian equivalent of
_Djatt_, an Indian race, and that, according to Ellious Bocthor, it
serves precisely, under the form _Zott_, to designate the Gipsies at
Damascus, I start from thence to gather from the important _Mémoire,
etc., sur l’Inde_, by M. Reinaud, a few data upon the history of the
_Zath_ or _Djatt_ of India, and to establish, pp. 45-48, the probable
identity of this race and the Gipsies. I repeat that this is precisely
the essential object of my ‘Additional Note.’

“I am not an Orientalist, and besides, as I have not failed to mention,
this note of ten large pages was written when my memoir was already in
the press. But I had the kind assistance of the learned and lamented
M. Reinaud, to whose memory I am glad here to render my tribute of
gratitude.

“Also, the eminent scholar of Leipzig, the same who had first opened
the way for discovering the connexion between the Gipsies and the
Djatt, Professor Fleischer, in a general account embracing the
scientific publications of three years (the same _Zeitschrift_, Vol
IV., 1850, p. 452), has not disdained to mention my work in these terms:

 “Bataillard, the author, etc., taking up the supplement to Pott,
 published in our journal, III., pp. 321-335, has, with the aid of
 Reinaud, shown the great probability of the opinion that the Zigeuner
 descend from the _G’at_ or _G’et_, the most ancient inhabitants of the
 north-west of India; and might not the name _Zigeuner_, _Zingani_,
 _Zingari_, [Greek: Τζιγγανοι: Tzinganoi], etc., by the intermedium of
 the form _Gitanos_, be derived from the name of this people?

“This last supposition of Professor Fleischer’s does not appear to
me admissible, for there is no doubt that _Gitanos_ is derived from
_Egipcianos_, as _Gipsies_ is from _Egyptians_.

“I come at last to Professor Pott’s article ‘Last Contributions
towards the Knowledge of the Gipsies and their Language,’ in the same
_Zeitschrift_ of 1853 (Vol. VII., pp. 389-399), mentioned in the
_Academy_, quoting Professor de Goeje, as the starting-point for the
identification of the Gipsy and the Jat. What do we find there upon
this subject? The following lines (p. 393):

 “I am indebted to the obliging friendship of Professor Fleischer,
 of Leipzig (see our _Zeitschrift_, III., p. 326), for an important
 passage upon the Zuth of Hamza Ispahani, whose _Annals_ are anterior
 to the _Shahnameh_, as M. Bataillard demonstrates in his _Nouvelles
 Recherches_, p. 42. For the origin of the Gipsies we ought to consider
 very attentively these _Zotth_, who, according to what Rödiger
 communicates to me, are also confounded with the _Zengi_ (called also
 _Aethiopes_, and whose name is even sometimes employed for _Zingari_:
 see my _Zigeuner_, i., p. 45). In fact, the Zuth appear to be the same
 as the Jats, or, according to the Turkish Kamûz, Tchatt, concerning
 whom we find in Elliot, _Biogr. Index_, i. 270-27 (_sic_) (and
 especially, _Ibid._ in Masson, _Journey to Kelat_, pp. 351-353), an
 interesting article. See, moreover, Reinaud, _Mém. sur l’Inde_, 1849,
 p. 273, note 3 upon the Dschats, which may also be compared with the
 _Proverb. Arab._ of Freytag, Vol. II., p. 580 (communicated also by
 Fleischer, to which I must add the further statement of Bataillard).
 Above all, it would be very important for us to have some details
 concerning their language.

“Thus the learned professor of Halle here contents himself with the
fresh mention of the passage in Hamza, for which he was indebted to
Fleischer, and with pointing out some fresh sources to be consulted
for the Zotth, Jats, etc., which had been made known to him by the
same savant, and refers besides to my ‘further statements (weitere
Auseinandersetzung)’; and, as he afterwards devotes a long page to the
analysis of the principal part of my _Nouvelles Recherches_, which he
had mentioned at full length (pp. 389-390), and which he quotes again
in several other places, one would think that he had done enough.

“This mention has none the less escaped, according to all appearances,
Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, who nevertheless was acquainted with
this passage of Pott (since he mentions it, p. 16, so as to induce the
belief that the learned professor of Halle was the first to establish
a connexion between the Zott or Djatt and the Tsigans), and who quotes
in several places my long articles in the _Revue Critique_ on ‘Les
derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l’Europe Orientale’ (of
which the _tirage à part_ forms an octavo volume of 80 pages, 1872),
but who says not a word of my work of 1849. This is an omission such
as the most conscientious savants sometimes make; and I do not intend
to address a reproach to the learned professor of Leyden, whose work
must besides have all the superiority belonging to a deep study made
twenty-five years later by a most competent Orientalist. But since the
question of priority upon this subject has been raised in your paper,
you will, I think, perceive, in perusing what I wrote in 1849, which
I send you with this letter, that I have a right not to be completely
forgotten, especially when it concerns an interesting point in the
history of the Gipsies upon which I have hitherto published only some
fragmentary works, but to the study of which I have devoted so many
years.

“My letter is already long: allow me, nevertheless, to add yet a few
more words. Although I have in my possession the work of Professor de
Goeje (the author has had the kindness to send it to me), I cannot say
that I am acquainted with it, because I cannot read Dutch, and have
not yet found an opportunity of having it translated, which I doubly
regret under the present circumstances. I think, however, that I may
say that the point treated by the professor of Leyden, and twenty-five
years ago by myself, although it be already sufficiently complex, is
only one side of the very much more complicated question of the origin
of the Gipsies, considered in all its bearings. I hope to be able
to show that the historical documents of Eastern Europe, of Western
Asia, and of Egypt itself furnish very important data, hitherto very
insufficiently considered, upon the question. I think I have also the
means of giving an explanation of the word _tsigan_, and of the other
names approaching to it, more certain and more interesting than those
proposed by Professor de Goeje and Mr. Burton.

“It is not the less interesting to examine any point of the very
complex question of the origin of the Gipsies, and especially one so
important as this appears to be of their connexion with the Jats or
Djatt. But this point itself has, so to speak, several faces. There
is the part belonging to erudition in the strict sense, and I think
that Professor de Goeje has treated it very ably; but there is the
ethnological, anthropological, and even the linguistic part of the
subject, which does not appear to me to be very far advanced up to
the present time. _It is this part that Mr. Burton has handled; and
as he has lived in the midst of the Jats, he was in some respects in
the best condition for throwing great light upon it; but, on the one
hand, he ought perhaps to have been better acquainted with the Gipsies,
and, on the other, it does not appear that the connexion between the
Gipsies and the Jats has occupied him much. He has perceived a probable
relation between these two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in
half a page; but this is not sufficient._[101] No doubt in occupying
himself specially with the Jats, in giving in 1849 a grammar of their
language (of which I cannot appreciate the value, but which did not
prevent Professor Pott, in 1853, from saying that we were wanting
in information respecting this idiom),[102] in collecting some very
summary data concerning their division into four tribes, and upon their
history and manners, he has furnished some materials, but materials
quite insufficient,[103] for a comparison, _which is still unmade,_
between this race and the Gipsies. He tells us, for example, that the
appearance and other peculiarities of this race authorize as probable
the supposition of a relationship between it and the Gipsies. But he
does not give us even the smallest information respecting the type
(appearance) of the Jats; and the other ‘peculiarities’ which he does
not explain, and which we are obliged to seek in scattered traits,
furnish such fugitive comparisons that one can conclude nothing from
them. In reality nearly every tribe in India (not to speak of certain
tribes in other countries) will furnish, when compared with the
Gipsies, quite as many, if not more, points of resemblance. Indeed this
is, more or less, the defect of nearly all the comparisons which have
been made between the Gipsies and such or such populations of India;
the authors of these comparisons are not sufficiently acquainted with
the Gipsies, and their study of the resemblances is not sufficiently
_specific_.

“The Jats must belong, I suppose so at least, to the Hamite
(Chamite), and more particularly to the Kuschite stratum of the
Hindoo populations,[104] and for my part I do not doubt that the
Gipsies, although their idiom is connected with the Aryan languages
of India, belong to this same branch of the human species.--I remark,
by the way, in the division made by Mr. Burton of the Jats into four
tribes, that one of the districts inhabited by the second is called
‘Kach (Kutch).’[105]--But this branch is widely spread in Asia and in
Africa. It would be necessary, in the Kuschite family, to remark the
particular traits which distinguish, on the one hand, the Jats, on
the other, the Gipsies, in all the very complex affinities allowed by
ethnography, and start thence to compare them. This is what remains
to be done in order to throw light upon _this part of one side_ of
the question of Gipsy origin. It is useless to say that, in following
out more particularly this comparison between the Gipsies and the
Jats, the other points of comparison that may be furnished by other
tribes, related or not to the Jats, such as that of the _Tchangar_,
for example, pointed out by Dr. Trumpp in the Panjab (_Mittheil.
der Anthrop. Gesellschaft in Wien_, T. II., 1872, p. 294, quoted by
Miklosich in his third memoir on the _Zigeuner_, 1873, p. 2), and
several others, which it would be too long to mention, must not be
neglected. But all this can only be well done in India, and by a person
who has specially studied the Gipsies of Europe, of Eastern Europe
especially, and, if possible, those of Western Asia and even of Egypt.
Unfortunately these conditions are very difficult to find.

                     “(_Signed_) PAUL BATAILLARD.”

FOOTNOTES:

[97] [This letter appeared in the Academy, June 5, 1875.]

[98] The notes appended to this letter are by me.

[99] It has still to be proved of what tribe these Luri are: all that
we can say is that they are the natives of modern Lúristán (Elymaïs).

[100] A valuable authority, but still a poem.

[101] The italics are mine. What does the author know about my
acquaintance with the Gypsies, especially the Burton Gypsies? The “half
a page” will be answered in another place.

[102] This means simply that Professor Pott never saw my paper printed
at Bombay.

[103] Evidently a premature statement: the author knew only my
communication to the _Academy_ (Chapter I.).

[104] Of this stupendous Kushite theory I have something to say in a
future page. (194)

[105] _Proh pudor!_ I said _Kach (Kutch)_ Gandáva; and here it is
confounded with Kach (Cutch) near Gujrát (Guzerát).



CHAPTER III

A REVIEW OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD’S REVIEWS


§ 1. _Preliminaries_

M. Paul Bataillard--ominous name!--who has thus offered me battle in
the _Academy_, is apparently an indefatigable _Tsiganologue_,[106] to
use his own compound; and he seems to have been studying Chinganology
since 1841. Of bookmaking on the Gypsy theme there is no apparent
end; even the mighty “Magician of the North” proposed, we are told,
adding his item to the heap. The reading public, indeed, seems to
hold these _Hamaxóbioi_ an ever virgin subject; and since the days of
“Gypsy Borrow’s” _Translation of St. Luke_ (1838),[107] _The Zincali,
The Bible in Spain_ (1841), and other popular works, it has ever lent
an ear to the charmer, charm he never so unwisely. A modern author was
not far wrong when he stated: “A great deal of what is called genius
has been expended upon the Gypsies, but wonderfully little common
sense.”[108]

And the subject has its peculiar charms. These “outlandish persons
calling themselves Egyptians or Gypsies”; these cosmopolites equally
at home in the snows of Siberia and in the swamps of Sennaar; these
Ishmaelites still dwelling in the presence of their brethren, at once
on the outskirts and in the very centres of civilized life; this
horde of barbarians scattered over the wide world, among us but not
of us; these nomads of a progressive age isolated by peculiarities of
physique, language, and social habits, of absolute materialism, and
of a single rule of conduct, “Self-will,” all distinctly pointing to
a common origin; this phenomenon of the glorious epoch which opened a
new thoroughfare to the “East Indies,” and which discovered the other
half of the globe, is still to many, nay, to most men, an inexplicable
ethnic mystery. Englanders mostly take the narrow nursery view of the
“Black Man”; at the highest they treat him picturesquely in connexion
with creels and cuddies, hammer and tongs, the tin-kettle and the
katúna or tilt-tent. Continental writers cast, as usual, a wider and
a more comprehensive glance. M. Perier, with French “nattiness,”
thus resumes the main points of interest in the singular strangers:
“_Une race extraordinaire, forte, belle, cosmopolite, errante, et
cependant (?) pure, curieuse par conséquent, à tant de titres._”
The Rumanians have deemed the theme worthy of poetry; witness the
heroic-comic-satyric “Tsiganida,” or Gypsy-Camp, of Leonaki Diancu.[109]

The “wondrous tale” of the old Gypsy gude-wife concerning the “Things
of Egypt” is more wonderful, observe, than aught told of Jewry.
Certain of the learned credulous, as we read in the _Evidences of
Christianity_ and other such works, essentially one-sided, point to
the dispersion and the cohesion of the self-styled “Chosen People” as
a manner of miracle, a standing witness to certain marvellous events
in its past annals. They ignore or forget the higher miracle of the
“tinklers.” Whilst the scattering abroad of the Israelites arose
naturally from the same causes which in the present day preserve their
union, the powerful principle of self-interest and wealth-seeking,
the deeply rooted prejudices, social and religious, fostered by a
theocratic faith and by a special and exclusive revelation, the
lively tradition of past glories and the promises of future grandeur
confirmed by the conviction of being a people holy and set apart, the
barbarous Romá[110] are held together only by the ties of speech[111]
and consanguinity, and by the merest outlines of a faith, such a
creed as caste, or rather the outcast, requires. Still the coherence
is continuous and complete; still, like the rod of Moses, this
ethnological marvel out-miracles the other, and every other, miracle.

Hardly less peculiar is the historical relation of the Jew and the
Gypsy. They have many points in common. Both have had their exodus, and
are dispersed over the world. Both have peculiarities of countenance
which distinguish them from the “Gentiles,” whom they hate, the Goyím
and the Busne. Both have their own languages and preserve their racial
names.[112] Similarity of conditions, however, which should breed
sympathy, as usual amongst men has borne only hatred. But the Jew was
wealthy, like his cousin the Morisco. Hence the horrible persecution
of the Israelites in Spain (A.D. 1348-98), when a prevailing pest was
attributed to their poisoning the water, and which endured till the
Hussites drew down upon themselves the earthly “anger of Heaven.”
During those dreadful years many of the Hebrews fled to the mountains,
the Alpujarras and the Sierras--Morena and de Toledo--and to the wild
banks of the Upper Ebro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus. Meanwhile the
Gypsies suffered under the conviction that they were Jews who, denying
their forefathers, represented themselves to be of Egyptian blood.
Presently, when the revenues of the Catholic kings, Henry III. and John
II., amounting to 26,550,000 reals (dollars) reduced to our present
value, fell under Henry IV. to 3,540,000, the plethoric money-bags
of the Israelites led to the establishment of Holy Office and its
inquisitorial tribunal (January, 1481). Finally, as if persecution and
death were not sufficient, a wholesale expulsion took place in March,
1492. These horrors are still, after the lapse of ages, fresh in the
Jewish mind. I have seen at Jerusalem a Khákhám (scribe) so moved
by the presence of a Spanish official, that the latter asked me in
astonishment how he had managed to offend his host.

But what could the Santa _Hermandad_ alias _La Bruja_ (the witch) find
to plunder and pillage in the tent of the Rom? During three centuries
of loose wild life, often stained by ferocious crime, and made bestial
by the Draconian laws of mediæval Christianity, the Gypsies had their
seasons of banishment, torture, and execution; but their poverty and
isolation saved them from the horrors of a deliberate and official
persecution. _Mas pobre que cuerpo de Gitano_ (Nothing poorer than a
Gypsy’s body) is still a proverb in Spain, where men also say, _Tan
ruin es el conde como los Gitanos_. All these barbarities ended in
Europe with the close of the eighteenth century, where the new Religion
of Humanity had been preached by the encyclopedists whose major
prophets were Voltaire and Rousseau, Diderot and D’Alembert.

No Disraeli has hitherto arisen to vindicate the nobility of these
“masterful beggars”; and to chronicle their triumphs in court and
camp, in arts and arms; to trace them in the genealogies of titled
houses, or to strip off the disguises assumed during the intolerant
times when the Jew was compelled to swear himself Gentile and the
Muslim a Christian. Yet the Gypsies have had their great men, whilst
their pure blood has leavened much dull clay and given fresh life to
many an effete noble vein. Witness the “King Zindl” or “Zindelo”; the
Dukes Michael and Andrew; Counts Ion (Juan) and Panuel (Manuel) of
Little Egypt; the Waywodes (Vaivodes) of Dacia; the noble cavalier
Pedro, and the chief, Tomas Pulgar, who in A.D. 1496 aided Bishop
Sigismund to beat off the Turk invader. Witness, again, the Hungarian
Hunyadis, the Russian Tolstoys, and the Scotch Melvilles, not to speak
of the Cassilis and the Contis under Louis XIV. Certain Gypsies became
soldiers of renown; and John Bunyan, one of the immortals of the earth,
is shrewdly suspected of Gypsy descent. Borrow mentions an archbishop
and “four dignified ecclesiastics”; while some of the most learned and
famed of the priesthood in Spain have been, according to a Gypsy, of
the Gypsies, or at least of Gypsy blood.

Such is the Gypsy summed up in a few lines.

These pages have no intention, I repeat, of treating the subject of the
Romá generally. My humbler task is confined to showing the affinities
between the Gypsies and the great Jat tribe, or rather nation, which
extends from the mouths of the Indus to the Steppes of Central Asia.
And my first objection must be to a question of precedence with M. Paul
Bataillard.

The _Tsiganologue_ claims, as has been seen, “a still earlier priority”
in the identification of Gypsy and Jat; and he proposes to “establish
exactly the share belonging to each of us.” This is the normal process
of the cabinet savant, who is ever appearing, like the _deus ex
machinâ_, to snatch from the explorer’s hand the meed of originality.
The former borrows from his books a dozen different theories; and when
one happens to be proved true by the labours of the man of action, he
straightway sets himself up as the “theoretical discoverer” of the
sources of the Nile, or of any other matter which engages popular
attention. But in the present case I deny that my rival has any claim
whatever. My personal acquaintance with the Jats began in 1845, and my
Grammar and Vocabulary were sent to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1848
before my departure from India. On the other hand, M. Paul Bataillard,
I understand, knew nothing of the Indine Jats when he wrote his first
paper _De l’apparition, etc._, in 1844. He honestly owns that he
is no Orientalist; and that he required the assistance of the late
M. Reinaud, who _was_ a scholar, to identify the _Zuth_ of _Hamza
Ispahani_ (tenth century), the _Luri_ musicians of the _Shahnameh_
(eleventh century), and the _Zoth_ or _Zutt_ of the _Kamûz_ dictionary
(fourteenth century) with the Zatt or Dyatt of India. This was in 1849.
His _exposé étendu_ was accepted by Professor Pott in the same year,
and appeared in the _Nachtrag_ before mentioned, which completed the
_grand travail--Die Zigeuner_. Such was the extent of my claimant’s
discovery. He had even to learn from Professor Fleischer, of Leipzig,
that “the Zigeuner descend from the _G’at_ or _G’et_, the most ancient
inhabitants of North-Western India,”[113] a second-hand opinion,
derived from “Gypsy Borrow,” Colonel Sleeman, and other Englishmen.
I need hardly say that Professor Pott, the distinguished member of
that heroic band which founded comparative philology, knew nothing
practically or personally about either the Gypsies or the Jats. And it
is evident that Professor de Goeje is in outer darkness when he speaks
of “the view _propounded by Pott_ as early as 1853.”

At that time, and indeed until I wrote to the _Academy_ in 1875, M.
Paul Bataillard evidently ignored “M. Burton”; and no blame be to him
for not knowing a paper published by a colonial society a quarter of a
century ago. But he also ignored far more important facts. He applies
the term _petite population Djatte_ to the great scattered nation
called Jat. He was of course not aware that this people preserve in
the Indine Delta, the “Salt Country” of the Sindhis, the purity of its
tongue, which, farther north, is corrupted by an admixture of Sindhi,
Belochki, and Panjabi. Nor could he be alive to the fact that many
points of similarity, anthropological and linguistic, connect the Gypsy
and the Jat. There are men who are personally averse to new things, and
the easy alternative is to depreciate their value. “He,” I am assured
by my rival claimant, “has perceived a probable relation between these
two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in half a page; but this is
not sufficient.”

Such an assertion, however, is more than sufficient for estimating and
appreciating the Bataillard system of treating a literary question.
For “half a page” read a dozen pages,[114] which might easily have
been extended to many a dozen. But I had hoped that the statement
of a traveller who had met the Gypsies at Oxford (Bagley Wood), in
England, and on the Continent, and the knowledge of their racial
characteristics, general amongst educated Englishmen, justified a
conciseness imperiously demanded whilst treating in one volume the
geography, history, and ethnology of a country nearly equalling
England in length. Again, when M. Bataillard assures his readers that
I have “not given even the smallest information respecting the type
(appearance) of the Jats,” he once more makes it evident that he should
have read me before pretending to write about me. I will quote my
description in full,[115] so that the public may judge between him and
me:

“We are now in the provinces inhabited by the Jats. Your [_i.e._ Mr.
John Bull’s] eye is scarcely grown critical enough in this short
time to see the tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee-like difference between
their personal appearance and that of their kinsmen the Scindians;
nor can I expect you as yet to distinguish a Jat wandh (village) from
a Scinde goth (village). You are certain to take some interest in a
race which appears to be the progenitor of the old witch in a red
cloak, whose hand, in return for the cunning nonsense to which her
tongue gave birth, you once crossed with silver; and of the wiry young
light-weight, whose game and sharp hitting you have, in happier days,
more than once condescended to admire.

“Our authors[116] probably err when they suppose the Jat to be the
original Hindu of Scinde converted to Islam. Native historians and
their own traditions concur in assigning to them a strange origin;
their language, to this day, a corrupt dialect of that spoken
throughout the Indine provinces of the Panjab, gives support and real
value to the otherwise doubtful testimony.[117] It is probable that,
compelled to emigrate from their own lands by one of the two main
causes that bring about such movements in the East, war or famine,
the Jats of Scinde travelled southward about the beginning of the
eighteenth century of our era.

“Under the quasi-ecclesiastical Kalhorá dynasty, when Scindians
composed the aristocracy as well as the commonalty of the country, the
Jats, in consequence of their superior strength, their courage, and
their clannish coalescence, speedily rose to high distinction. The
chiefs of tribes became nobles, officials, and ministers at court;
they provided for their families by obtaining grants of ground, feoffs
incidental to certain military services, and for their followers by
settling them as tenants on their broad lands. But the prosperity of
the race did not last long. They fell from their high estate when the
Belochis, better men than they, entered the country, and began to
appropriate it for themselves; by degrees, slow yet sure, they lost
all claims to rank, wealth, and office. They are now found scattered
throughout Scinde, generally preferring the south-eastern provinces,
where they earn a scanty subsistence by agriculture; or they roam over
the barren plains feeding their flocks upon the several oases; or they
occupy themselves in breeding, tending, training, and physicking the
camel. With the latter craft their name has become identified, a Jat
and a sarwan (camel-man) sounding synonymous in Scindian ears.

“The Jats in appearance are a swarthy and uncomely race, dirty in the
extreme, long, gaunt, bony, and rarely, if ever, in good condition.
Their beards are thin, and there is a curious (i.e. _Gypsy-like_)
expression in their eyes.[118] They dress like Scindians, preferring
blue to white clothes; but they are taller, larger, and more un-Indian
in appearance. Some few, but very few, of their women are, in early
youth, remarkable for soft and regular features; this charm, however,
soon yields to the complicated ugliness brought on by exposure to
the sun, by scanty living, and by the labour of baggage-cattle. In
Scinde the Jats of both sexes are possessed of the virtues especially
belonging to the oppressed and inoffensive Eastern cultivation; they
are necessarily frugal and laborious, peaceful, and remarkable for
morality in the limited sense of aversion to intrigue with members
of a strange Kaum.[119] I say in Scinde; this is by no means the
reputation of the race in the other parts of Central Asia, where they
have extended (_or whence possibly they came_).[120] The term ‘Jat’
is popularly applied to a low and servile creature, or to an impudent
villain; and despite of the Tohfat el Kiram,[121] a Beloch would
consider himself mortally affronted were you to confound his origin
with the caste which his ancestors deposed, and which he despises
for having allowed itself to be degraded. The Brahins, Afghans, and
Persians all have a bad word to say of them.”

Thus far M. Paul Bataillard has shown himself only the carpet-slippered
_littérateur de cabinet_, who laboriously borrows from others, and who
evidently expects his second-hand labours to _faire époque_.

But my rival claimant, let me hasten to own, has solid merits. His
theory that Gypsy emigrations are of ancient date, and probably of
high antiquity, deserves consideration. His later notices of the Jats
correct the vulgar error which made Taymur the Tatar cause the first
exodus of our “sorners.” He notes the especial hatred, possibly racial,
nourished by these Gentile vagrants against the other scattered nation,
the Jews. Other minor but still interesting matters of which he treats
are the history of the Gypsies especially with respect to their slavery
and serfdom--Crown captives, not chattels personal; their periodical
wanderings and visitings; their vestiges of faith; their vernacular and
humble literature; their private and tribal names suggesting those of
the modern Israelitic Synagogue; and their supplying the dancing-girls
of the nearer East, while in the lupanars of Europe a Gypsy girl is
unknown.

I now propose to run as rapidly as the subject permits through M. Paul
Bataillard’s four papers _seriatim_. The critique will not only notice
novelties, but will also attempt to correct what to a practical man
appears to want correction in connexion with the Gypsies.


§ 2. “_Derniers Travaux, etc._”

This paper treats chiefly of South-Eastern Europe, which has been
estimated to contain at least six hundred thousand of the Romá--a
number, by-the-bye, wholly inadequate. The author’s self-imposed limits
would be the western Slav frontier, a meridian drawn from the southern
bend of the Baltic to the Adriatic head. Topographically disposed, upon
a line trending from east to west, the review deals in its progress
with writers mostly modern; and it forms an excerptive rather than an
exhaustive or even a summary bibliography.

The first of the two component parts travels with the authorities who
treat of Russia, Poland and Lithuania, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary,
Transylvania, the Banat, the Rumanian Principalities, and Turkey, or
rather Constantinople. The lands about the Balkan Range, so unknown
not many years ago and now so much talked of, are justly considered
a second Gypsy _patria_, the “old home” being India. The review is
accompanied and followed by side-glances at those who treat of Finland
and Norway, of Persia and Basqueland, of Scotland and Holland, of
Sicily and Italy, which once owned an exceptional _castrum Giptiæ_.
This section ends with linguistic and ethnographic remarks borrowed
from many sources and specifying a considerable number of requisites.

In the second part the critic reviews M. Alexandre G. Paspati, D.M.,
a famous name in Gypsydom. This learned Greek physician--one of the
few children, by-the-bye, who escaped the “gentle and gallant” Turk
in the foul Chios massacre of 1822--was educated in America, and is
as highly distinguished for his Indian and Byzantine as for his Gypsy
studies. The _Étude, etc._, of 1870, which continued and completed his
elaborate memoirs (1857-1862), is the work of a scholar who knew the
Romá personally, not of a mere _littérateur_. The book teemed with
novelties. For instance, it suggested that the article (_o_ or _u_;
í and e), as unknown to the Asiatic Gypsy (?) as to the Sanskrit and
the Prakrit, had been borrowed by his European congener from the Greek
[Greek: ὁ: ho] and [Greek: ἡ: hê], thus suggesting long residence
in Hellas and familiarity with its people. Might it not, however,
have been a simple development of _íhá_ and _uha_, the demonstrative
pronouns in Játaki--_this_ and _that_ becoming _the_? But as all
Germanic, neo-Latinic, and Slav tongues have either produced or
borrowed an article, the same may have been the case with the Gypsy,
which comes from the same root.

M. Paspati satisfactorily proved that the wandering tribes of the Romá,
_e.g._ the wild Zapáris or Dyáparis (Szapary?),[122] have preserved in
Rumelia the _langue mère_ of their ancients, whereas the “domigence,”
the sedentary dwellers in cities and towns, have “falsified” the
tongue. The same is said by the Bedawin concerning the “Jumpers of
Walls,” the settled Arabs. This part of the subject leads to notices of
Gypsy tales and legends, in which, by the way, Gypsies rarely figure,
and to other productions of _la pauvre Muse tsigane_.

After some discursive matter, our critic passes from M. Paspati to M.
Bartalus, who has quoted from certain very rare tracts (_La Véritable
origine, etc._, A.D. 1798 and 1800) on the rise of the Gypsy nation.
The _Bohémiens_, it appears, are descendants of Cham or Ham, “which is
admissible”; and, like their brethren, they were damned by Noah. But,
on the destruction of the Plain cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, Adama and
Saboim--Segor being honourably excluded--Zoar and its inhabitants were
saved because they harboured one Lot. The lands, however, were assigned
to this “patriarch”; and the Hamites, being dispersed, became Gypsies.
Once more that myth of Noah!--for how much false anthropology is it
not responsible? Again, we do not fail to meet another old friend. The
wicked king of Egypt appears in a famous “Pharaoh Song,” whilst in
Iceland he gave his name to a cavalry of seals. The oath formula of the
Hungarian Gypsies prescribed by the courts was: “As King Pharaoh was
engulfed in the Red Sea, so may I be accursed and swallowed up by the
deepest abyss if I do not speak the truth! May no theft, no traffic,
nor any other business prosper with me! May my horse turn into an ass
at the next stroke of his hoof, and may I end my days on the scaffold
by the hands of the hangman!”[123]

The critic then passes to a second and a remarkable characteristic of
the Gypsy race, the musical, which is now becoming known throughout
Europe. At the Paris Exposition of 1878 the “nightingales of Koursk,”
a troop of forty Romá from Moscow, followed the Hungarian _Cziganes_,
and were equally admired. Even the celebrated Catalani appreciated the
Chingáneh girl of Moscow, “who performed with such originality and true
expression the characteristic melodies of the tribe”; and threw over
her shoulders a papal gift in the shape of a rich Cashmere shawl. Most
Englishmen now know that Mr. Bunn’s “Bohemian Girl,” thus unhappily
translated from _La Bohémienne_ of St. George, was a Romni girl. The
far-famed Abbé Liszt[124] attributed to these “tinklers” the chief
_rôle_ in treating the musical _épopée_; but this opinion of the great
master is opposed by the artistic M. Bartalus. I, however, incline to
Liszt’s view. Let me note that the popular Romani word for musician,
Lautar (plural Lautari), may either be the Persian Lútí,[125] or more
probably a deformed offspring of the Arabic El `Aúd[126], which gave
rise to our “lute.” Our critic holds that the Gypsy’s music, like
his tales and poetry, is his own; whilst the matter of the songs and
ballads is borrowed from Hungarians, Rumans, and even the unimaginative
Turk: he also points out that many of the legends are cosmopolitan.
When the Catalan Gypsy, met by the author in 1869 at St. Germain, told
him that the _état_ (Dharma or religious duty) of the Romni-chel, the
“sons of women” (_i.e._ their mothers), is to cheat their neighbours;
that they learned this whole duty of man from St. Peter, who as our
Lord’s servant habitually tricked and defrauded his Master; that _le
dieu Jesus_, who established all human conditions on the creation day,
had taught them, by example as well as precept, to beg and to vagabond
naked-footed; that his tribe were veritable Christians “who knew only
God and the Blessed Virgin”; and that all these things were written in
the “Book of the Wanderings of our Lord,”--we recognize the old, old
tale. The ancient Rom, like a host of other facetious barbarians, was
solemnly hoaxing a simple student, a credulous “civilizee.” Still the
joke has its ethnological value; it shows that the pseudo-Christian
saints of the Gypsy Evangel are thieves and “sorners.” Highly
characteristic also is the address to the Gypsy deity: “Good, happy
God of gold!” On the other hand, such laical legends of the Apostles
are current even amongst Christian peoples, from whom they may have
been kidnapped by the Romá. Witness the French peasant’s tale of Jesus
and St. Peter, the horseshoe and the cherries, which has for moral the
market value of thrift.

The supplementary article analyzes the scholarly work of M. Franz
Miklosich.[127] This erudite Slavist whose only reproach is that he
finds Slavism in every place, distributes the Gypsies into twelve
linguistic groups, to which he assigns an inadequate total of six
hundred thousand head. Amongst the highly conservative Romá of Northern
Russia he detects, besides Russian and Polish, Ruman and Magyar words,
expressions borrowed from the neo-Greek of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. As these Hellenisms are also adopted by the Spanish Gypsies,
the natural deduction is that Greece generally formed an older home
long inhabited by the wanderers, who thence passed on _viâ_ Poland to
Russia. But this theory, if proved to be fact, would not invalidate
the general belief that some Gypsy tribes migrated through Egypt and
Morocco into Spain without crossing the Pyrenees. The Romá, being
“sturdy vagabonds,” rather than true nomads, would borrow from one
another during their frequent and regular meetings the terms wanting to
their scanty and barbarous speech. It appears rich enough in material
and sensuous expression, and the same is notably the case with the
wandering Arab and the Turkoman. M. Paspati[128] notices that “the
[Rumelian] wanderer has more than forty words for his tent and the
implements of his trade.” A “Thieves’ Latin” would not be required by
these bilinguals; but for the purposes of concealment and villainy they
would readily adopt strange vocables. Thus in the Scottish Lowlands
they make their English speech unintelligible by French and Gaelic,
Welsh and Irish insertions. As will appear, they have invented in
Egypt and Spain, and I believe there only, a regular _argot_. Such
irregularities prevent our attributing much importance to the general
remark that the Gypsy dialect does not return; _i.e._ that the Polish
Romá do not use Russian terms, nor the Turkish Romá Magyar words.

Finally, M. Miklosich puts to flight the “Tamerlane tenet” of popular
belief which would place the last Gypsy exodus after A.D. 1399. He
adduces documentary evidence, the well-known donation instruments of
A.M. 6894 (= A.D. 1386-87) issued by the Kings of Wallachia; noting
that during the fifteenth century, and even between 1832 and 1836, the
Principalities, which have still preserved the Jewish disabilities,
held the Gypsies to be a Slav race.

The _Derniers Travaux_ has the merit of bringing prominently forward
the “hypothesis of Hasse,” advanced in 1803 and presently forgotten.
It would explain the purity of the Gypsy tongue by the fact of these
tinklers being settled in Europe _ab antiquo_. It has often been
remarked that the farther we go eastward, and the nearer we approach
the cradle of the race, Sindh or Western India, the more completely
the language changes and degrades. This is to be expected. The Jats
living in close contact with other dialects would necessarily modify
their own after the fashion of their neighbours; such is the rule of
the world. The Romá have only two ties: one is of blood, the love of
“kith, kin, and consequence”; the other is of language which serves to
conceal his speech. During the dispersion of centuries the Gypsies,
surrounded by alien and hostile races, would religiously adhere to
the old tongue; and having a vital interest in preserving a secret
instrument, it would war against change. It is the more necessary to
insist upon this view, as our critic expects to find after a separation
of some four centuries the Jats or other tribes speaking pure old
Gypsy. The modern Gypsy may still represent the ancient Játaki. Hence
also the dialect of their ancestors is dying out amongst the sedentary
Romá. M. Paul Bataillard has carefully separated, and perhaps too
curiously, the historical arrival of the Gypsies in Western Europe and
their establishment in the south-eastern regions, Thrace, Dacia, etc.
An abuse of his theory makes him urge the identity of his _Tsigane_
with the mysterious Sicani who held Sicily before the Siculi. These and
other prehistoric identifications have not yet been generally adopted.

Had M. Paul Bataillard reflected a little more, he would not have
advocated, considering the extensive habitat of the Jats, the
insufficient theory of M. Ascoli--namely, that the Gypsies are Sindhis
who dwelt long in Hindustan; nor would M. Ascoli have omitted the
widely spoken Játaki from his list of neo-Indian tongues, which he
unduly reduces to seven. We should have been spared the “conviction”
that the Romá dwelt in Mesopotamia, which was only one station on
their way, Asia Minor and the Lower Danube being the general line of
Aryan emigration; that they are aborigines of Kabul, in fact primitive
Afghans, as supposed by another French _littérateur_, whose lively
imagination strips him of all authority; and, finally, that they
are “descendants of those ancient peoples of Bactriana and Arya,
successively conquered by Persians, Greeks, Indogetæ, and Afghans.”
A most trivial comparison is made between Segor, the biblical city,
and the Gypsy name Cingani (Singani). When Professor Pott and M. de
Saulcy find “relationship” and “close connexion” between Sanskrit and
_Romani-chíb_, they should have explained that the latter is a Prakrit
or vulgar tongue with an Aryan vocabulary reposing upon the ruins of a
Turanian base. The former, as its name shows, was a refined and city
language, never spoken, nor indeed understood, by the peoples of India
in general; in fact, a professor’s speech, like the present Romaic of
the Athenian _logiotátoi_.

The word _Berber_ (Barbar), again, applied to the Gypsies in Persia,
means, according to its root, a chatterer, patterer, or speaker
of unintelligible cant. It is the Sanskrit Varvvara, [Sanskrit:
वर्व्वर][129], a low fellow, a savage, the Barbaros of the Greeks and
Romans; the Be_r_be_r_, [Sindhi: بڙبڙ], or Berber, [Arabic: بربر], of
modern Hindustan; and the racial name of that great scattered people
the Barábarah, who stretch from the Nile Valley to North-Western
Africa. The lunar god, Raho, of the Norwegian Gypsies is a palpable
reminiscence and survival of the demon Ráhu. The Gházieh of Egypt are
_not_ “also called Beremikeh”;[130] the Barámikah are a substitute
of the Ghagar. The “Chungaló,” the “Jungaló,” and the “Zungaló” of
Paspati, signifying a non-Gypsy, is evidently Jangalí, wild or sylvan
(jungle) man, the popular title of Europeans, especially of Englishmen,
in India. Das also, the term applied by the Romá to their Bulgarian
and Wallachian neighbours, bears a suspicious resemblance to the Hindu
Dashya and Dasa, vulgarly Doss, a low caste or rather a no-caste man,
supposed to represent the original Turanian lords of the land.

Moreover, why assume with M. Paspati that [Greek: γ: g], [Greek:
θ: th], and [Greek: χ: ch] are “Greek importations into the Gypsy
tongue”? Of these letters two are Arabo-Persian: [Greek: χ: ch] is
= Khá, [Arabic: خ]; and [Greek: γ: g] is = Ghayn, [Arabic: غ]; the
gamma pronounced Ghámma in Romaic parlance when preceding the open
vowels, _á_ and _o_. The third generally corresponds with the Arabic
Sá, [Arabic: ص], pronounced in Persian and Hindi as a simple Sín
(_s_)[131]. The critic, however, should not have told us, “_Le_ [Greek:
θ: th] _répond assez bien au ‘th’ Anglais_.” Our sibilant has two
distinct sounds: one soft, as in _thy_, answering to the neo-Greek
[Greek: δ: d]; the other hard, as in _theme_, = [Greek: θ: th]. The
Gypsy Owa, Va (yes) bears a suspicious resemblance to the vulgar Arabic
Aywá, contracted from Ay w' Allah--aye by Allah! A man must have
absolutely no practical knowledge of the Rom or of his congener the
“mild Hindu” who can ask, “_Les esprits grossiers sont-ils donc plus
subtils que les nôtres_?” This is the mere _morgue_ and _outrecuidance_
of European ignorance. Let the author try the process of “finessing”
upon the first lad, Jat or Sindhi, who comes in his way, and he will
readily be made to understand my meaning. Finally, I venture to throw
out a hint that the “barbarous helot” may preserve the tribal name
Nath, [Sanskrit: नट][132], a mime. This caste, with which the Gypsies
used formerly to be identified,[133] certainly did not represent
the “wild aboriginal inhabitants of India”; they may have Dravidian
affinities, but they are certainly not of Turanian blood.


§ 3. “_Origines, etc._”

This paper was published in 1875, when M. Paul Bataillard had the
benefit of my letter to the _Academy_; and apparently its main object
is to prove that he preceded me in identifying the Gypsies with the
“Djatte” (Jats). It is divided into three parts, which are four. No.
1 contains the author’s reclamation and his notice of Professor de
Goeje; No. 2 works out more fully his own theory of Gypsy origin; No. 3
contains a “certain and definitive explanation of the word _Tsigane_”;
and No. 4, by way of colophon and endowment of research, thrusts
forward certain preachments upon the direction of future inquiries for
the benefit of us rude practical men.

Of No. 1, I have already treated, and content myself with
energetically objecting to the statement that all who have treated
about the peoples of the Indine Valley have imagined either a possible
or a probable _rapport_ between the Jats (not Juth) and the Gypsies. M.
Paul Bataillard again shows that in 1850, when my paper was published
in 1849, neither he nor Professor Fleischer knew aught concerning the
modern Sindhi Jats, a mere section of the race, save the corruption of
a name. They were ignorant of its extensive habitat scattered between
the Indus mouths and the Tatar Steppes. They had never learned that it
speaks its own peculiar dialect, which is like that of the Gypsies and
the Sindhi to a certain extent, Persico-Indian.

Part No. 2 becomes much more sensational. We find that our critic’s
ideas have grown, and that the antiquity of the Gypsies in
South-Eastern Europe extends deep into the misty regions of the past.
In 1872 he merely alluded to the high importance of the ethnic name
Sindho or Sinto (feminine Sindhi; plurals Sindhe and Sindhiyan),
“meaning the great.” Now he would identify them with the aborigines
of Lemnos, those “lords of Vulcan” the [Greek: Σιντιες: Sinties]--a
word generally understood to signify robbers ([Greek: σινομαι:
sinomai]). The connexion is brought about because Homer describes
these metal-workers as speaking a wild speech ([Greek: αγριοφωνοι:
agriophônoi]), and because Hellanicus of Lesbos derives them from
Thrace. Two independent authorities--the original hypothesist Dr.
Johannes Gottlieb Hasse in 1803, and M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in
1847--had suggested an idea which M. Paul Bataillard borrowed and
adopted. The _Tsigane_ represent, we are assured, not only the Sicani
of Sicily, but also the [Greek: Σιγυναι: Sigynai, Σιγυνοι: Sigynoi,
Σιγιννοι: Siginnoi], whom Herodotus places in the Caucasus, Asia Minor,
and Thrace. The broad gap of years is bridged over, in the teeth of M.
Paspati, by means of certain mediæval Byzantine heretics, the [Greek:
Αθιγγανοι: Athinganoi], Manichæans like the Albigenses, the Paulicians,
and especially the dwellers in Bosnia and its neighbourhood, also
called Athigarii, Atingarii, Anthingarii, and Atingani; and this only
because certain of the modern Greeks call their Gypsies Athinganoi
([Greek: Αθιγγανοι: Athinganoi]). Brosset[134] notices that in the
eleventh century, when King Bagrat visited Constantinople, he there
heard a marvellous and wholly incredible thing; namely, that a tribe of
the Samaritans descended from Simon Magus, and called _Atsinkan_, were
still infamous for their evil-doings and sorceries. And then we have
a silly story of how the monk St. George of Athos rendered all their
poisons of no account.

Moreover, we are told, _if_ the modern Tsigane represent the Sinties
and the Siginnoi, they must, _ergo_, stand in the same relationship to
certain mysterious tribes inhabiting the Caucasus and Western Asia,
Egypt, the Levantine Islands, and the Danubian basin. Thus we see the
origin of the Telchini, the Chalybes, and other “Cabiric peoples.” The
latter has the disadvantage of being purely Semitic, Kabír meaning “the
great” applied to the twelve _Dii majores_ of the Phœnicians who sent
forth Kadmos (El Kadín) = the old or the great.[135] But let that pass.
Our author proves his fact by showing that these races, like the modern
Romá, were makers of weapons, especially the assegai or javelin; whilst
the Cabiri and the Telchini were renowned for music and soothsaying.
And how not recognize the Troglodytic Sibyls of Asia Minor and Egypt,
of Greece, and especially Thrace, in the pure Gypsy, when [Greek:
Σιβυλλα: Sibylla] is only a form of [Greek: Σιβυνη: Sibynê] or [Greek:
Ζιβυνη: Zibynê], which naturally derives from [Greek: Σιγυνη: Sigynê],
[Greek: Σιγυννος: Sigynnos] = _Tsigane_? How not perceive that the
Egyptian prophetesses turned into black pigeons by Herodotus, and the
doves of Dodona, were not identical with the Romní?

This becomes a disease--_Tsigane_ on the brain; from which our
author evidently suffers in an acute form--so acute as to render his
imagination most lively. To the unimaginative ethnologist the “Sindhi”
are simply the Sindh tribes of Gypsies, so called from the Sindhu, that
mighty stream which gave to Europe a name for the Indian Peninsula.
Hence, indeed, some philologists would derive the Spanish word Zincale
(Zinkale), making it a compound of Sindh and Kálo (plural Kále, black)
= dark men of Sindh. Rejecting this treatment, we must consider it a
tribal name like Karáchi (= lower Sindhian), Helebi (Aleppine), Lúri
(from Lúristán), and many others into which the great Jat nation is
divided.

But whilst we reject particulars, we must beware how we treat the
general theory. Tradition and ethnological peculiarities, far stronger
than philological resemblances or coincidences, tend to prove that the
earliest metal-workers and weapon-makers were an Indine race whose
immigration long preceded the movement of the last ethnic wave, the
Gypsy of history. Herodotus notices a caste or corporation of ambulant
founders and metal-workers which came from Asia, possibly belonging
to the age called by M. de Mortillet _de la chaudronnerie_, when the
hammer took the place of simple fusion. Modern research has shown that
these prehistoric artisans affected Gypsy habits like the _caldereros_
(coppersmiths) of the Romá in later ages. They had no permanent abodes;
their _ateliers_ were not inside the towns, but _en plein champ_ near
inhabited centres; here they fashioned their new and recast their old
metal, bartering their works for furs, hides, amber, and other articles
of local _provenance_. Hence M. Émile Burnouf[136] assumes these
wandering workmen of the Bronze Age to have been a Gypsy race; while
the remarkable similarity, I may almost say the identity, of the alloy
suggests that it was the produce of a single people. We must, however,
be careful how we accept his derivation from Banca and Malacca of the
prehistoric tin required for bronze. It would first be supplied by the
Caucasus mines to a race of workmen migrating along the southern base
from the West to the East. The next source of supply, before passing to
Southern France, Spain, and the Cassiterides, would be North-Western
Arabia. The Book of Numbers[137] distinctly mentions the metal, placing
it between iron and lead, as part of the spoils taken by the children
of Israel from their cousins the Midianites (_circ._ B.C. 1450); and
the two Khedivial expeditions (A.D. 1877-78) have brought home proofs
that it may still be found there. Indeed, I have a suspicion that
the “broken” people of Western Arabia are descended from the ancient
Gypsies who may have worked the gold mines of Midian.

Part No. 3 corrects Professor de Goeje, M. Fagnan, and myself in our
several explanations of _Tsigane_. The exaggerated value attributed
by M. Paul Bataillard to his own “typical proof and the material
confirmation of all his system” seems to have hindered his revelation;
and he insists upon it naïvely as if it were proof of Holy Writ. Its
venerable “hypothetical origin” must be sought in the root CHINÁV,
meaning to thrust, throw, fight, cut, kill, write, and eject saliva. It
survives in the word Sagaie or Zagaie (our assegai): the latter, when
split in two, contains a first part similar to _sag_-itta, and a second
like _gais_ (_gœ_-sum), the heavy, barbed Gallic javelin; whilst the
whole resembles the Amazonian Sagaris, an axe.

In the name of the Prophet--figs! This dreamery is ushered in as usual
by a whole page of discursive matter. The debased Romaic [Greek:
κατζιβελος: katzibelos], a “maker of javelins,” used by a Byzantine
poet of the middle fourteenth century, is shown = Sigynos = _Tsigane_.
Kilinjirides, a Græcised form of the Turkish Kilij-ji, or sword-maker,
is the same word. Let me here note that the “pure Turkish term Kaldji,”
still used at Rhodes, is not the same as Kilij-ji; it is the bastard
compound Arabic and Turkish Kala'-jí, a tinsmith. Such are some of the
linguistic will-o’-the-wisps which have, I fear, habitually misled our
critic.

I must now consider the origin of the corrupted “typical term” Tsigane,
which M. Paul Bataillard has converted into a “generic name.” The
old and obsolete derivations of the _Zingaro_, which with various
modifications prevails throughout Europe, are the following.[138] Ciga
or Siga, the seaport of Mauretania Cæsariensis, or the Ciga or Cija
River mentioned by Lucan; the Magian Cineus; Zeugitania Regio (Zeugis);
Singara, the Mesopotamian city; Zigera, a Thracian settlement; the
Zinganes, a tribe inhabiting the Indus Delta (?); the Zigier Province
in Asia Minor; and “the bird _Cinclo_” (motacilla or wagtail), a
“vagrant bird which builds no nest,” and therefore gave rise to the
term Cinli or Cingary. Less absurd is the derivation from Singus, or
Cingus, the chief of a horde under “Tamerlane,” who employed these
men, not as combatants, but camp-followers and to export trains[139]
(A.D. 1401). Arabshah, the biographer of the great Tatar Amír, recounts
a contrivance by which in A.D. 1406 he rid his city (Samarkand) of
the rebellious Zingaros; and the account of this race shows a certain
correspondence with the Gypsies. Hence, probably, Borrow (_The
Zincali_) tells us that “the Eastern Gypsies are called Zingarri.” The
word is quite unknown to Turkey and Persia. In 1402 they accompanied
the Sultan Báyezíd on his invasion of Europe along the Danube, and
thus settled in Bulgaria and Old Servia.

What we know for certain is that the Gypsies have been known in Persia
from time immemorial as Chingáneh, [Persian: چِنگانه]. Professor de
Goeje writes the word Tsjengán (Chengán), and would explain it by the
Persian plural of Tsenj, a musician, a dancer. Is this word intended
for Chang, a harp, or for Zang, in Arabic Zanj, a Kálo, a “black man,”
as the Gypsy is still called in England? Chingáneh in Syria becomes
Jingáneh, the Semites having no _ch_; and the term now applies, not
to the Gypsies generally, but to a small and special tribe. The Greek
and Romaic [Greek: Ατζιγγανος: Atzinganos] and [Greek: Αθιγγανος:
Athinganos] corruptions of Chingáneh, are, as we have seen by Atsinkan,
as old at Constantinople as the eleventh century. In Turkish the word
is written as in Persian, but the pronunciation changes to Chingyáneh;
M. Paspati adopts Tchinghiané, the Turco-French corruption, with the
e = eh. Hence evidently the Hungarian Czigan (Czigany, Czigányok,
Czingaricus, etc.), and the Transylvanian Cingani, which appears in
writings of the fifteenth century; the former evidently engendered M.
Bataillard’s bastard _Tsigane_. The Poles turned Chingáneh into Cygan
(Cyganaeh, Cyganskiego, etc.), and the Russians into Zigan. Here we see
the Italian Ciano, Cingano, and Zingano, the older forms of Zingaro and
the Portuguese Cigano.

The Spanish Zincali is derived by Borrow from two Gypsy words meaning
“Kále” (the black men) of Zend (Sind or Ind), a theory perfectly
inadmissible. The Iberian Gitáno, now a term of opprobrium, is
probably a survival of the racial name, and not a corruption of the
older Egypciano, the Basque Egipcioac. The latter, evidently from
Aigyptos, Ægyptus, Egypt, an “Egyptian,” is itself a corruption of
Kupt, [Persian: کپط], in modern parlance a Copt. Hence the Turks also
call their vagrants Kupti or Gupti. Hence also [Greek: Γυφτος: Gyphtos]
in Romaic applies indifferently to a Gypsy or a blacksmith, and hence
finally our Gypsy, which should be pronounced with a hard _g_, and
written as by the older writers Gypsy. All four derive from a different
root, the Egyptian.

As regards the German Zigeuner and its older forms Secane and Suyginer
(fifteenth century), Professor de Goeje would derive it from Sjikâri
(Syikári), as he writes Shekári, a huntsman, much reminding us of
that diction which confounds “srimp” with “shrimp.” The word means a
wanderer, and seems to derive from the root that gave us _zig_-zag.
The Dutch call these Indians _Heiden af Egyptiër’s_; the French
_Égyptiens_, but preferably _Bohémiens_, showing what they believed to
be the last halting-place of the tribe before it passed on to Western
Europe. A curious irony of fate has connected in the Gallic mind the
old land of the Boii with all that is wild and unsettled, when its
sons are the stiffest and the most priggish of the Austro-German
_beamter_ class.

Not a few commentators on the Bible[140] have believed the Gypsies
to be that “mixed multitude” which has done so much for romantic
ethnology. This medley, the Hebrew’s _hasaphsuph_, corresponding with
the Arabic _Habash_ (Abyssinian), we are told “went up also with the
Jews out of Egypt.” The learned add that they marched eastward to
India, became veritable Aryans, retraced their steps to Misraim, the
two Egypts, upper and lower, and thence spread over Europe.

For the first set of words, _Tsigane_ included, I hold Chingáneh to be
the origin, owning at the same time my inability to determine the root
or history of the word. For the second, whose type is Gitano, I think
it probable that the wanderers may have modified their racial name
_Jat_ and its adjective _Jatáni_ into the semblance of _Egyptian_ at
the time when they represented themselves to be descendants of the old
Nile dwellers and to speak an Egyptian (Coptic) dialect. The Jugo-Slav
tongues abound in similar instances of conversion, vernacular and
significant terms being often applied to the older terms of conquered
or occupied countries. For instance, _Aurisina_, the Roman station
near Trieste, became _Nabresina_, from na-brek = ad montem.

Returning to M. Paul Bataillard, we find him declaring that the Gypsies
are generically Chamites (descendants of Ham!), and specifically
Kushites, “who lived long enough under the 'Aryas in the Indus region
to _lose their Kushite tongue_ and to adopt an Aryan dialect.” This
immense assertion, made perfunctorily, as it were, and without
acknowledgment of its source, is worthy of the eighteenth century
and its “mixed multitude” borrowed from the Book of Exodus. What the
learned Movers (_Geschichte d. Phœnicier_) said of the “Kushites”
was that, originally from India, they migrated in prehistoric days
westwards, allied themselves with the Semites, and became the peoples
speaking such Aryo-Semitic tongues as the Egyptian and Coptic,
Himyaritic and Ghíz. To believe that this also was the history of the
Gypsy movement is to hold that, whilst other “Kushites” changed their
physique and their morale, their eyes and hair, their cheekbones and
figures generally, the Gypsies have remained pure Indians without a
trace of other blood.

A word here upon this “Kushite” theory, which has been accepted by
men of the calibre of Heinrich Brugsch Bey. It appears to be simply a
labour-saving institution, in fact what algebraists call _supposer un
inconnu_, a pure assumption which spares the pains of working out the
origination of the so-called Aryo-Semitic races. These Kushites, who
were they? Where are they mentioned in history or legend as emigrants
from the plains of Hindustan to the north-eastern angle of Africa?
What traces have they left upon the long route across Western Asia
which connects the Indus with the Nile? How came it that, without
marking their exodus by a single vestige of civilization, they began
at once to hew the obelisks and build the pyramids in their new home,
the _chef-d’œuvres_ of artistic Egypt’s golden age? No answer to such
objections as these.

In Part No. 4, concluding the paper, M. Paul Bataillard attempts to
conciliate his “principal thesis” with the views of M. de Goeje. The
Leyden professor opines that the first colonies of Djatts (Jats) were
founded amongst the Persians and Arabs of the seventh century; and M.
Fagnan also speaks of inscriptions in Buddhist characters treating of
the Jats in the fourth and fifth centuries. The tribal name, corrupted
by Arabization, appears in the “Canal of the Zott” (Zutt) near Babylon,
and in the “Zott-land.” Families of “Zotts” were transplanted to Syrian
Bosra, Bostra, or Old Damascus during the earliest Muslim conquests in
the seventh century (_circ._ A.D. 670), not in the ninth (A.D. 855),
as our author had determined. About A.D. 710 “Zotts” and Indians were
transferred from the Indus to the Tigris (Khuzistán); and between
A.D. 714 and 720 a certain number were sent with their four thousand
buffaloes--“which make the lion fly (!)”--to colonize the Antioch
regions. Hence possibly the name of the large tribe which is known
in Egypt and elsewhere as “El H'aleb,” or “Helebi, the Aleppine.”
They waxed powerful enough in their new possessions to contend with
the Caliphat till A.D. 820-834, when they were subjugated, and some
twenty-seven thousand were transplanted to Bagdad. Thence they were
sent north-eastwards to Khánikin and westwards to Ayin-Zarba (?) in
Syria, a place subsequently (A.D. 855) captured by the Byzantines; and
finally the “Zott” and their belongings were carried off and dispersed
throughout the empire.

So far so good. But our critic appends a rider to Professor de Goeje’s
tale. He owns that this race, Zott or Jats, may have transformed itself
into Gypsies--not difficult, as they were Gypsies. But he contends that
they formed a feeble modern addition to his “Kushites,” to the race
which was represented _ab antiquo_ by the Sicani and Sinties _et hoc
genus omne_.

Further let me note _en passant_ the vulgar error now obsolete which,
confounding Hindi with the Urdú-Zabán or camp dialect,[141] made the
former a bastard modern tongue when its literature is as old as the
earliest English and French. And here we may note that, while the
_Romni-chíb_ is in point of vocabulary a sister of the Hindi, the
grammar of the noun with its survival of regular cases belongs to a
more remote age. It is partly Prakrit and partly Sindhi, a dialect
whose numerous harsh consonants make us suspect, despite Dr. Trumpp,
a non-Aryan element. Besides the prehistoric occupation of the
trans-Indine regions by the Indo-Scythians noticed in Alexander’s day,
we find another dating from far later times. The Bactrian kingdom which
became independent sixty-nine years after the great Macedonian’s death
lasted one hundred and thirty years, and was destroyed about B.C. 126
by the “white Huns,” Chinese Tatars, who crossed the Jaxartes. Hence
possibly the Dravidian Brahins still dwelling in the midst of Aryan
populations. The apparent anomaly that the wild and vagrant Gypsies
have preserved in Europe ancient forms which have died out in the old
home has already been accounted for; I may also number amongst the
causes of conservation the total want of a written character, which
also proves the early date of the Gypsy exodus.


§ 4. “_Notes et Questions, etc._,” “_Sur le mot Zagaie, etc._”

I treat of Nos. 4 and 5 out of order of date because they are mere
_ausflugs_ illustrating Nos. 3 and 6. From the first we learn that
when the French occupied Algiers in 1830 they found the city and its
territory partly occupied by Gypsies, who did not mix with the Arabs
or the Kabyles (Kabáil or the Tribes), with the Jews or the Europeans.
They spoke their own tongue, and they were often visited by their
congeners of Hungary and other parts of Europe. It is conjectured that
these Romá may have passed over from Spain, and possibly that they
travelled eastward from Morocco, as Blidah contains many of the race.
The question becomes interesting when we find the Egyptian _Ghagar_
claiming to be emigrants from the West. According to the Librarian of
Algiers, the late M. Berbruger in 1846, they were known as Guesáni,
pronounced G'sáni or G'záne (Gezzání), the feminine singular being
Gezzána (Gezzáneh).[142] Here of course M. Paul Bataillard finds no
difficulty in detecting, through Dzâna and Tsâna, “a corruption of
the true name _Tsigani_ or _Tchingani_.” The latter form, I would
observe, retaining the nasal of the original Chingáneh and the Arabized
Jingáneh, is far preferable to the mutilated _Tsigane_ adopted
afterwards (1875) with so much pomp and such a flourish of trumpets.

A family dislodged from a house in the present Rue de Chartres was
found lying upon the straw surrounded by human skulls, serpents, and
other instruments of their craft. Whilst being evicted they noisily
threatened their molesters with all manner of devilry; but as usual
they ended by submitting. The men apparently had no occupation; the
women used to wander about the streets in small parties, generally a
matron followed by four or five girls, crying, “Gezzáneh! who wants
to know the future?”[143] The Durke,[144] or pythoness, carried a
tambourine; and when divining she placed upon her drum-head a bit of
alum and of charcoal, with pebbles, beans or grains, wheat and barley;
these represented the “elements,” water, fire, and earth, thus showing
that the process was a rude form of the Arab’s geomancy. Sometimes the
“spae-wife” made passes over the consultee’s head, holding in her hand
a lump of sugar; this reminds us of the magicians in Morocco and Egypt
and their mesmerized “clear-seers.” Between 1837 and 1838 these Gypsies
retired into the Sahará or Desert; and now they visit the city only
in caravans. Their women, tattooed and painted like the Bedawiyyah,
are generally robed in rags and tatters, and decorated with the usual
tinsel, rings, and hangings.

An interesting subject, but by no means easy of treatment, would be
the order of Dervishes known as Aïssaoua, also “called _Adrá_, from
the name of one of their festivals.”[145] They have been noticed by a
multitude of writers each more ignorant than the other. These men are
probably Gypsies, to judge by analogy with the Rifá'i Dervishes, who
will be noticed under the head of Egypt. The same may be said of the
Naïlette, the Almah (Álimeh) or dancing-girl of Algiers, who affiliates
herself with the Aulád Ná'il[146], the large and wealthy Bedawin tribe
occupying the inner regions. Similarly the Nawar Gypsies farther east
derive themselves from the Beni Nawar. These Naïlettes are public when
young, yet in after-life they become faithful wives; the same is said
of the Egyptian Ghagar and the nach-girls of India. According to one
authority, there are among the Mozabites two or three Gypsy tribes that
live by prostituting their women to caravans. It is curious to compare
the rigid chastity of the Gypsy girls in England and Spain, indeed in
Europe generally, where a lapse would lead to certain death, with their
looseness of life elsewhere. But the Romá is _une race curieuse entre
toutes_, and both extremes may be expected from it.

It remains only to treat of No. 5, which discusses the origin of the
word Zagaie or Sagaie, the Spanish and Portuguese Azagaia, a small kind
of Moorish spear which we have named assegai, transferring it to the
throwing dart of the Básetu or Káfir race. We have seen (§ 3) that M.
Paul Bataillard has fathered upon this term the mysterious racial name
_Tsigane_ (Chingáneh), and there is no reason to repeat what has been
said of his derivation. We may accept his dictum: “There are words
whose history would, if known, throw vivid light upon human migrations
and the affinity of peoples in very ancient ages.” But here we find, in
lieu of illumination, outer darkness. The comparison of Zagaie, Gæsum,
and Gais is bad enough; but it is worse to transport the assegai into
South American speech. Demersay, describing the Paraguayan tribe of
“Payagas” (the Payagúas or Canoe Indians), calls their lance _Pagaie_,
“which,” remarks our author, “may, it appears, be permitted to me to
identify with Sagaie.” This is again transcendental etymology applied
to ethnic misuse. Pagaie here is simply the popular European, and
especially French, corruption of Tacapé or Tangapé, the paddle-club of
ironwood sharpened to serve as a sword, and used by all the maritime
tribes of Eastern South America. Finally Korik, the bellows, so called
by the Gypsies of Asia Minor, is not _Turkish_, but a corruption of the
Arabic Kor.

Here ends my long notice of M. Paul Bataillard’s four papers; the
novelties introduced into them will, it is hoped, be held to justify
the prolixity.

FOOTNOTES:

[106] The following are his advertised works; he kindly supplied me
with copies of all, except the first two, which were out of print:

  1. _De l’apparition et de la dispersion des Bohémiens en Europe._
      Reprinted from the _Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes_, 1844,
      in 8vo of 69 pages; and again in 1849 by M. Franck. I understand
      that in this, his first paper, the author knew the “Zott,” but
      ignored the “Jats.”

  2. _Nouvelles Recherches sur l’apparition des Bohémiens en Europe
      (particulièrement dans l’Europe Orientale,--avec un appendice sur
      l’arrivée de dix ou douze mille Louri, Zuth, ou Djatt en Perse
      entre les années 420 et 440)._ From the same _Bibliothèque_,
      1849, in 8vo of 48 pages, a _petit travail_ (as the author calls
      it) containing his first notice of the Jats.

  3. _Les derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l’Europe
      Orientale._ From the _Revue Critique_, Vol. II. of fifth year
      (1870-71). Reprinted Paris: Franck, 1872. In treating of the
      Gypsies the Jats now become an important element.

  4. _Notes et questions sur les Bohémiens en Algérie._ From the
      Bulletin of the _Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, Séance du 17
      Juillet_, 1873. Reprinted Paris: A. Henmeyer, 1874.

  5. _Sur le mot Zagaie ou Sagaie, et accessoirement sur le nom du
      soufflet de forge primitif._ From the Bulletin of the _Société
      d’Anthropologie de Paris, Séance du 21 Mai_, 1874.

  6. _Sur l’origine des Bohémiens ou Tsiganes, avec l’explication du
      mot “Tsigane.” Lettre à la Revue Critique._ Paris: Franck, 1875.
      This last publication criticises my identification of the Gypsies
      and the Jats, etc.

[107] _Embéo e Majáro Lucas, etc._, now rare. This version preserved
intact many of the Spanish words used by Padre Scio, instead of
converting them into pure “Romani.” See Borrow.

[108] For instance, when Borrow makes Chai denote the men of Egypt
or the sons of Heaven, when it simply signifies children, being a
dialectic variety of the Hindi Chokra, Chokrí.

[109] A second “Tsiganida” was in the hands of the late M. Pierre
Assaki, possibly composed by one of his kinsmen.

[110] Rom (man), masc. sing.; Romá (men), masc. plur. Romni, Romniá,
woman, women; Romaní, adjectival, belonging to man. Hence our phrases
“_rum_ fellow” and “pottering Rommany.” Lom is a mere popular
mispronunciation of Rom, and Ro is a vulgar abbreviation. The latter
word I would derive from the Coptic [Greek: ρωμε: rôme] (romé), a man.

[111] The bond of language has perhaps been exaggerated by M. Alexandre
G. Paspati, _Étude sur les Tchinghianés en Bohémiens de l’Empire
Ottoman_ (Constantinople, 1870), and others, where they assert
“_l’histoire entière de cette race est dans son idiome_.”

[112] As the Jews all have especial Hebrew names for the Synagogue
besides the Gentile family-names known to the world, the Gypsies are
also binominal. Thus the Stanleys are Bar-engres (stony fellows); the
Coopers, Wardo-engres (“wheel fellows,” coopers); the Hernes, Balors
(hairs, hairy fellows); the Smiths, Petul-engres (“horseshoe fellows,”
blacksmiths); and the Lovells, Camo-mescres (amorous fellows). See _The
Zincali_.

[113] Getæ, Goths.

[114] _History of Sindh_, pp. 246, 247, and Notes, p. 411; _Scinde,
or the Unhappy Valley_, Vol. II., pp. 116-19; _Journal of the Bombay
Asiatic Society_, pp. 84-90; without including the Grammar and the
Vocabulary.

[115] _Scinde, or the Unhappy Valley_, Vol II., pp. 116-19.

[116] Alluding chiefly to Captain Postans’ _Personal Observations on
Scinde_, chap. iii.

[117] Both of these statements have been modified by subsequent
experience. The Jats are _not_ immigrants, nor is their language
corrupt Panjabi. It is connected with the Sindhi; but it wants those
intricacies and difficulties, and that exuberance of grammatical
forms, which, distinguishing the latter from its Prakrit sisters,
renders it so valuable for the philological comparison of the neo-Aryan
tongues. The vernacular of the Sindh Valley has preserved many forms
for which we vainly look in its cognates, and it is notably freer
from foreign admixture than any other of the North Indian dialects,
the Panjabi, Hindi, and Bengali of our day. It has, in fact, remained
tolerably steady to that first stage of decomposition which attacked
the Prakrit of the ancients. Hence Dr. Trumpp (_loc. cit._) holds it
to be an immediate derivation from the _Apabhransha_, which the old
grammarians placed lowest in the scale of Prakrit speech. “While all
the modern vernaculars of India,” he says, “are already so degraded
that the venerable mother tongue (Sanskrit) is hardly recognizable in
her degenerate daughters, the Sindhi has, on the contrary, preserved
most important fragments of it, and erected for itself a grammatical
structure which far surpasses in beauty of execution and internal
harmony the loose and levelling construction of its sisters.”

[118] Every observer has noticed the Gypsy eye, which films over, as
it were, as soon as the owner becomes weary or _ennuyé_; it has also
a remarkable “far-off” glance, as if looking over and beyond you.
Borrow (_The Zincali_) describes it as a “strange stare like nothing
else in this world.” And again he says that “a thin glaze steals over
it in repose, and seems to emit phosphoric light.” It is certainly a
marvellous contrast with the small, fat-lidded eye of the Jew, the
oblique and porcine feature of the Chinese, and the oblong optic of the
old Egypt which in profile looks like full face.

[119] In the language of the Jat a Kaum is a clan.

[120] The italicised words are in the second edition.

[121] The author of this well-known Persian history of Sindh asserts
that the Jats and the Belochis are both sprung from the same ancestors.

[122] I cannot but suspect some connexion between the Gypsy tribal name
and that of the Counts Szapary, one governor of Fiume, and the other
commanding a _corps d’armée_ in Bosnia.

[123] _Die Einwanderung der Zigeuner in Europa._ Ein Vortrag von Carl
Hopf. (Gotha, 1870.)

[124] _Des Bohémiens et de leur Musique en Hongrie._ (Paris, 1859.)

[125] Literally, a descendant from Lot; popularly, a loose fellow, a
cad.

[126] [_The Arabic word is_ [Arabic: العود] _which is currently
transliterated as El-`Oúd_.--_Transcriber_.]

[127] _Ueber die Mundarten und Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa’s._ Von
Dr. Franz Miklosich Denkschriften der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften.
(Wien, 1872-77.)

[128] _Étude, etc._, p. 15; see also _Derniers Travaux_, p. 37.

[129] [_While Varvvara_ [Sanskrit: वर्व्वर] _is what appeared in the
original book, it was common to omit the cross on the lower circle
in some forms of writing, so Barbbara_ [Sanskrit: बर्ब्बर] _is also
possible. Hindi Wikipedia lists the desired word as Barbara_ [Sanskrit:
बर्बर].--_Transcriber_.]

[130] Here the mincing French pronunciation has done its very worst
wholly denaturalizing the Perso-Arabic word.

[131] [_The text is transcribed as it was in the original book. However
Sín in Arabic and Persian is written_ [Arabic: س].--_Transcriber_.]

[132] [_The Sanskrit is transcribed as written in the book. However
that word would be transliterated Naṭa. Nath would be_ [Sanskrit:
नठ]--_Transcriber_.]

[133] _Asiat. Res._, VII. 451.

[134] _Histoire de la Géorgie_, Part I., p. 338. The modern Armenians
call the Gypsies Boscha, possibly from Bokchá, by which the Russian
Gypsies denote Hungary.

[135] I am not a little surprised to see a scholar like Mr. Gladstone
declaring that “Kadmos signifies a foreigner” (_Homer: Primer._) The
“Old One” with his sixteen letters is supposed by M. Freret (_Canon
Chronologique_) to have settled at Bœotian Thebes in B.C. 1590, or some
century and a half before Troy was founded (B.C. 1425).

[136] “L’Age de Bronze,” _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 15, 1877.

[137] [Chap. xxxi. 22.]

[138] Borrow; _El Gitanismo_.

[139] Tamerlane is our corruption of Taymúr--_i.e._ long, limping
Taymur. The Gypsies call Asmodeus Bengui lango, the lame devil, the
devil on two sticks. Not a few Hungarian Chingáneh accompanied the
Napoleonic armies to Spain.

[140] For instance, Roberts on Ezekiel (chaps. xxix. and xxx.).

[141] An Urdú-Zabán has been formed in Italy, where the soldiers drawn
from a multitude of provinces, each speaking its own dialect, not to
say _patois_, have developed a special speech. The officers are obliged
to study this “pidjin-Italian.”

[142] The feminine plural is not given; analogy would suggest it to be
Ghanázineh.

[143] The same cry used by the Egyptian Gypsies: see Von Kremer’s Notes.

[144] Literally, a far-seer. The Persian word _dúr_, far or distance,
Germ. _dort_ and Engl. _forth_, is familiarly used in Hindustani, and
its compound forms are frequent in Turkish.

[145] The Id el Zuhá, alias Kurbán Bayrám, the festival of the yearly
pilgrimage to Mecca.

[146] [_The Arabic word is_ [Arabic: أولاد نائل] _which is currently
translterated as Ouled Ná'il_.--_Transcriber_.]



Part II

_TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE GYPSIES AND THE JATS_



CHAPTER IV

HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE GYPSY IN EUROPE


Before proceeding to the topographical portion of my subject, it
may be well to review summarily the historical accounts of the Romá
who overspread Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Grellman, a classic upon the subject of “Chinganology,”[147] proved
that the last movement to Western Europe set out, not from Bohemia, but
from Hungary and the adjacent countries, including (Old) Rumelia and
Moldavia. In 1417 some three thousand settled in Moldavia, whilst late
in the same year hordes of Tatars, then so called, appeared before the
gates of the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic coast, first Luneburg, and
then Hamburg, Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund.[148] Next year
they migrated to middle Germany, to Meissen, Leipzig, and Hesse; and
presently turned their steps towards Switzerland, entering Zürich on
August 1, 1418. There they divided their forces. One detachment crossed
the Botzberg, and suddenly appeared as “Saracens” before the Provençal
town of Sisteron. The main body, led by “the dukes, the earls, and
a bevy of knights,”[149] turned towards Alsace, swarmed through
Strasburg, and halted under the walls of Nuremburg.

It is not easy to determine the date of their arrival in Spain, where
they may have dwelt in far more ancient times; indeed, during the
fifteenth century the Iberian Peninsula was popularly supposed to be
their birthplace.[150] On the other hand, many Spaniards believe them
to be Germans, and called their tongue “Germania,” Gypsy German.

In 1433 they invaded Bavaria; and thence they spread over Germany,
Denmark, and Sweden.

Their first appearance in French Christendom seems to be when a tribe
of one hundred and thirty-two souls, under “a duke,” “a count,” and ten
“knights,” startled the people of Paris, August 17, 1427. Pasquier, an
eye-witness, who records the arrival of these “Christian penitents” at
Paris, where they lodged in La Chapelle, outside the city, gives them
ugly features, with crisp black hair.[151] If he be correct, the horde
either must have sojourned long in Africa, or must have had intercourse
with negro and negroid. There is no more constant characteristic of the
modern Gypsy, after his eye, than the long, coarse, black Hindu-Tatar
hair.

From an old work[152] it would seem that the Gypsies drifted to England
about 1500, though this is uncertain. The writer, in his book published
in 1612, says: “This kind of people about a hundred years ago began to
gather an head about the southern parts. And this I am informed and can
gather was their beginning: Certain Egyptians [_sic_] banished their
country (belike not for their good condition) arrived here in England;
who for quaint tricks and devices, not known here at that time among
us, were esteemed and held in great admiration; insomuch that many
of our English loiterers joined with them, and in time learned their
crafty cozening. The speech which they used was the right Egyptian
[_sic_] language, with whom our Englishmen conversing at least learned
their language.”

We first hear of them in Italy in the early part of the fifteenth
century. On July 11, 1422, a horde of fully one hundred, led by a
“duke,” encamped before Bologna, passing by Forli, where some of
them maintained they came from India. At Bologna these “mild Hindus”
represented that they were bound on an expiatory visit to the Pope.

Elsewhere they became “penitents,” who, expelled by the Saracens from
their homes in Lower Egypt, had confessed themselves to his Holiness,
and had been condemned to seven years’ wandering and dispersion by
way of penance. Thus was visited upon their heads the crime of those
“perverse pagans” their forefathers, who refused a drink of water
to the Virgin and Child flying from the wrath of Herod. This was
only fourteen centuries after, and we know that _lenta ira deorum
est_. There was quoted concerning them the forty years’ dispersion
of Ezekiel: “And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst
of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities
that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter
the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the
countries” (xxix. 12). The prophet’s minatory ravings against the old
Egyptians, who had been a “staff of reed to the house of Israel,” were
also recalled to explain their bondage and vagabondage. Hence some
declared that it was sinful to maltreat these pseudo-pilgrims.

The Gypsies travelled to Rome and secured a papal safe-conduct twenty
years after their first appearance at Bologna. Hypocritical legend
secured them passes and passports from the European powers who were
then engaged in the perilous Ottoman Wars. They were more or less
supported by the Emperor Sigismund and the bishop of the same name,
who, A.D. 1540, at Fünf-Kirchen employed them in casting iron and
cannon-balls for the benefit of the Turks; by Ladislas II., King of
Hungary, and other potentates. The Gypsies doubtless imitated the Jews
in hedging between the two belligerents, and in betraying both of them
for their own benefit; and this doubtless was part of the cause of the
persecution which the two scattered races endured. Purely religious
movements of the kind are rare in history; but they are numerous when
religion mixes itself, as it ever has and always will, with politics.

Presently public opinion changed, and the natural reaction set in.
Lorenzo Palmireno, A.D. 1540, declared in one of his books “that the
Gypsies lie,” and the lives they led were not of penitents, but of
“dogs and plunderers.” They were now loaded with all the crimes of
the Middle Ages--espionage in the cause of the infidel, incendiarism,
professional poisoning and other forms of assassination, cannibalism,
sorcery and bewitching, blaspheming God and the saints, and personal
intercourse with the foul fiend in the shape of a grey bird.

In 1499, shortly after the institution of the Holy Office, A.D. 1481,
and the expulsion of the Jews, A.D. 1492, the “Great Pragmatic,” signed
by Ferdinand and Isabella at Medina del Campo under the influence of
Jimenez de Cisneros, the archbishop who disgracefully broke faith
with the Moors of Grenada, formally attacked the vagrant race.[153]
It decreed that the Egyptians and stranger tinkers, _caldereros_,
should settle as serfs for sixty days, and after that time leave the
kingdom under severe personal penalties. This decree was renewed under
Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo, in 1523, and of Madrid, in 1528,
1534, and 1560, with the condition that “those found vagabonding for
the third time should become the life slaves of their captors.” Under
the timorous Philip III., 1619, the Professor of Theology to the
Toledo University, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, addressed a discourse to the
king justifying the wholesale slaughter of the race, even women and
children, by the dictum, “No law pledges us to bring up wolf-cubs.”

Following the lead of the Catholic kings, the Diet of Augsburg,
1500-1548, revoking all previous concessions, banished the Gypsies
from the Holy German Empire under similar conditions. This ordinance
was also revived in 1530, in 1544, in 1548, in 1551, and in 1577,
the last time confirmed by a police regulation at Frankfurt. In 1545
the Superior Tribunal of Utrecht punished a Gypsy who had disobeyed
a decree of exile by flogging until blood was drawn, by splitting
his nostrils, and by shaving his head before he was driven to the
frontier.[154]

In England the liberal and Protestant Henry VIII.[155] sanctioned an
Act of Parliament persecuting the Gypsies to extermination; and it was
renewed by Philip and Mary, and by Elizabeth.

Francis I. of France followed the example of his neighbours; and
under Charles IX. the persecution was renewed by the States-General
assembled at Orleans, 1561, who decreed extermination by steel and
fire. Another and similar edict appeared in 1612. Charles V., besides
his proclamations in Spain and Germany, condemned the Gypsies of the
Netherlands to enrolment under pain of death, and this was confirmed
by the States-General in 1582. Fanatic Poland in 1578 issued a law
forbidding hospitality to Gypsies, and exiling those who received them.
Pius V. showed himself equally inhuman, and the Romá were driven from
the duchies of Parma and Milan, from the republic of Venice, and the
kingdom of Denmark. Sweden distinguished herself by the severest laws
of expulsion in 1662, 1723, and 1727.

From these barbarities arose the Gypsies’ saying, “King’s law has
destroyed the Gypsy law.” The latter consisted of fidelity to one
another; the code contained only three commandments, of which the first
two were addressed to women:

“Thou shalt not separate from the Rom (Gypsy law).”

“Thou shalt be faithful to thy Rom.”

“Thou shalt pay thy debts to the Rom.”

These Draconian laws against the Gypsies died out during the
development of civilization, and received their death-blow at the hands
of the great and glorious French Revolution, 1789.

       *       *       *       *       *

I propose now to collect a series of notices upon the subject of the
Gypsies and the Jats which are not readily procurable by students; many
are obtained from books little known to the public, and not a few are
gathered by myself. And with a view of introducing some order into the
scattered tribes, we will begin from the farthest East, the old home.

FOOTNOTES:

[147] _Histoire des Bohémiens_, French Translation of 1810.

[148] The _Edinburgh Review_, “Origin and Wanderings of the Gypsies,”
July, 1878, adopted the opinion of F. Bataillard that a single
scouting-party was in Europe between 1417 and 1427.

[149] [“They appeared in various bands, under chiefs, to whom they
acknowledged obedience, and who assumed the titles of dukes and earls”
(_Weissenburch_).]

[150] The opinion is refuted by Francisca de Cordova; yet the _Histoire
de Los Gitanos_, by J. N., published in Barcelona 1832, expressly says
that the Gitanos, whom he has specially distinguished from the Gypsies
descended from the Arab or Moorish tribes, came from the coast of
Africa as conquerors at the beginning of the eighth century.

[151] [Hoyland writes: “When they arrived in Paris, nearly all of them
had their ears bored, with one or two silver rings in each, which they
said were esteemed ornaments in their own country. The men were black,
their hair curled; the women remarkably black, and all their faces
scarred” (_Historical Survey of the Gypsies_).]

[152] A quarto work by S. R., published to detect and expose the “art
of juggling” in 1612.

[153] For the special persecutions in Spain and Portugal under Philip
III. (1619), Philip IV. (1633), Charles II. (1692), and Philip V.
(1726), whose decrees prevailed until 1749, see _El Gitanos_. [“German
writers say that King Ferdinand of Spain, who esteemed it a good work
to expatriate useful and profitable subjects--Jew and even Moorish
families--could much less be guilty of an impropriety in laying
hands on the mischievous progeny of the Gypsies. The edict for their
extermination was published in the year 1492. But instead of passing
the boundaries, they only slunk into hiding-places, and shortly after
appeared in as great numbers as before” (_Hoyland_).]

[154] [“Even at the present day a Gypsy in many parts of Germany is not
allowed to enter a town; nor will the inhabitants permit him to live in
the street in which they dwell” (_Simson_).]

[155] [“An outlandish people, calling themselves Egyptians, using no
craft nor feat of merchandise, who have come into this realm, and
gone from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company; and
used great subtlety and crafty means to deceive the people--bearing
them in hand that they, by palmistry, could tell men’s and women’s
fortunes; and so have deceived the people for their money; and also
have committed many heinous felonies and robberies” (22 _Henry VIII.,
c._ 10).]



CHAPTER V

THE GYPSY IN ASIA


§ 1. _The Punjabi Jats_

We find the Jats well and copiously described as early as 1835 by
Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sleeman.[156] He called them “Jâts,” with
a long vowel, and treats them everywhere as low caste, or rather
no-caste, Hindus. Their original habitat was upon the Indus about
Multán, one of the headquarters of Hindu fable, and thence they spread
to the Jumna and the Chumbul Valleys. They were alternately robbers
and peaceful peasants until about A.D. 1658, when they plundered the
ill-fated Dara Shikoh, son of Shah Jehan, the Moghol. Enriched by this
feat, they became the nobles and rajahs of the land; and they expended
vast sums in building forts like Bharatpúr, Matras, and Gohud, and on
public works like the quadrangular garden at Díg. Incited by a love of
conquest and plunder, and united by a feeling of nationality, which
may be called patriotism, they would have become, but for the Maráttás
and for the English, the dominant race in India. Fate, however, was
against them, and those dwelling between the Indus and the Jumna merged
into the Nánah-Shákis or Sikhs. As regards the origin of his “Jâts,”
Colonel Sleeman reminds us that Sultan Mahmoud carried back with him to
Hindustan in A.D. 1011 some two hundred thousand captives, the spoils
of his expedition.

The way of the new faith presently converted powerful subjects and
industrious peasantry into a fighting caste, and every Jat became
a soldier. On the other hand, those lying along the Jumna and the
Chumbul, never having been inspired with the martial spirit or united
under any conqueror, continued to drive the plough. Thus external
influence combined to make the Jats restless, and gradually they turned
their steps westward.[157]

Again, Ghenghis Khan, in A.D. 1206, and his descendant Turmachurn, who
in A.D. 1303 invaded India and carried off hosts of prisoners, may have
given impulse to the current westward. Lastly, about two centuries
after, the great Conqueror whom Europe has apparently determined by
sectarian nickname, “Tamerlane,” swept over Northern India in A.D.
1398-1400, and his horde must have caused a wide scattering of the
weaker tribes.

The Jats, I may here notice, inhabited the Indine Valley, whence
emigration westward is easy; the other tribes, like the Nats,
fancifully connected with the Gypsies, were by no means so favourably
situated for an exodus. Originally the Gypsies must have been outcasts,
not Hindu Pariahs, as some have supposed them to be; although they may
have borrowed from those Aryans the horse-sacrifice and the burning of
the dead--the latter custom has become obsolete in Europe, and now only
a few of the deceased person’s clothes are thrown into the fire. They
had words for God (Deob) and the Devil (Bad God--Benga), “Já li benga”
(Go to the Devil) being a popular curse. They were unalphabetic: so
clever a race would certainly not have lost a written character, and
they became nominal Christians and Muslims in imitation of those among
whom they settled.

The Jats are still half nomads, and perhaps of old they were wholly
nomadic. They are breeders of cattle and rude veterinary surgeons.
They are fond of music, as are all these races; and their dances are
exactly represented by those of the Egyptian Gypsies, a similarity
which has yet to be insisted upon. Their iron-smelting, like that of
the Mahabaleshwar tribes, is exactly like that of the Romá. Their sword
play is that of the Hindu, whereas the Gypsies in Scotland use a direct
thrust straight to the front,[158] certainly not learned in India.
The village Jats are said to mould the babies’ heads; perhaps the
idea arose by the shampooing of the younger children by the mothers.
Divination seems to be the growth of the soil, and palmistry palpably
derives from India. Snake-charming is also common amongst them. As
their history in the Panjab proves, they are disposed to robbing and to
violence. Lastly, though the history of the country universally derives
them from the Land of the Five Rivers, the modern date of Muslim annals
would not be proof against their being a race of remote antiquity.

Believing that the Jats may fairly have sent forth the last wave of
Aryan emigration, the Gypsies, a western flood which was probably
preceded by many others, I attempted during my last trip through
Sindh in the spring of 1856 to enlist fellow-workmen in the task
of illustrating their ethnology and philology. Able linguists like
Lieutenant-Colonel Dunsterville, Collector of Hydrabad, and others,
were willing to assist me. But I was much disappointed by the
incuriousness of a certain professor who met me at Milan before my
visit to Western India and Sindh. He had never seen my Grammar and
Vocabulary, of which he desired the republication; but he accepted
with enthusiasm my offer to enlist collaborators in the Valley of the
Indus for the purpose of proving or disproving his favourite theory
that the Gypsies are Sindhis who have long dwelt in Afghanistan.[159]
This professor had of course no personal experience; anything he had
written on the subject was derived from theory only. Object lessons are
not yet popular in Italy; it is easier to visit the camel of the Jardin
des Plantes than the camel of the desert, and we can hardly expect a
_littérateur_ to take interest in gathering together raw new facts.


§ 2. _The Jats of Belochistan._

The following interesting extract is borrowed from _The Country of
Balochistan_,[160] by A. W. Hughes (London, 1877):

“In returning to a consideration of the Jat race of Kachh Gandāva, it
may be mentioned that wherever they are found--and they may it seems,
from what Masson states, be seen not alone in the Panjab and Sindh and
in those countries lying between the Satlej and Ganges Rivers, but even
at Kābul, Kandahār, and Herat--they preserve their vernacular tongue,
the Jatki. Of this language many dialects are believed to exist, and it
may well be suggested by Masson that the labour of reviewing would not
be found altogether unprofitable. It appears to be a fact that the Jats
in some places preserve the calling of itinerant Gypsies, and this more
particularly in Afghanistan; and it is not unlikely that some affinity
in their language and habits might very possibly be traced between them
and the vagabond races of Zingāris which are spread over so large a
portion of Europe. The Jats of Eastern Kachhi, the supposed descendants
of the ancient Getæ, form the cultivating and camel-breeding classes,
and are of industrious and peaceable habits, but are dreadfully harried
and plundered by the marauding Balochis of the neighbouring hills.
They are, so to speak, the original inhabitants of this district, the
Rinds,[161] Balochis, and Brahuis having settled in the country at an
apparently recent period. The Jats are numerously subdivided among
themselves, some tribes amounting, it is said, to nearly forty in
number. Some of these are known under the names of Aba, Haura, Kalhora,
Khokar, Machni, Manju, Palal, Pasarar, Tunia, and Waddera. In general
they are all Muhammadans of the Suni persuasion.”

As El Islam was established in these countries before our tenth
century, and the Hinduism of the Lower Valley of the Indus and of
Multán dates from the days of Alexander the Great, the original
emigration of Gypsies, who hardly preserve a trace of Hinduism, must
either have been outlying pagans or a race of extreme antiquity.


§ 3. _The Gypsies of Persia._

Captain Newbold, after visiting the Gypsies in Sindh, Belochistan, and
Multán, found them in the “great plain of Persepolis; in the blossoming
Valley of Shiráz in the Butchligar Mountains; on the scorched plains
of Dashtistan and Chaldea.” He thinks that they may be traced to,
and probably far beyond, the Caspian, and easterly to the deserts of
Herman and Mekran. They affect but little the scanty fare and the
uninteresting life of the desert. Perfectly distinct from the pastoral
“Iliyát,” the Bedawin of nearer Asia, the Turkomans, Kurds, and other
nomads who camped far from the abodes of settled men, these tribes
wander from town to town and village to village, always pitching tents
near the more industrious, on whose credulity they partly subsist, here
and elsewhere.

The ostensible trades of the Persian Gypsies are those of the
blacksmith and tinker, the tinner of iron, makers of winnowing sieves,
cattle doctors, and fortune-tellers; they are also workers in gold,
and forge the current coins of Persia and Turkey. Others are Zíngar
(saddle-makers); and Newbold adds, evidently without sufficient basis:
“Hence the Zinganeh, a Kurdish tribe who are supposed to be of Gypsy
origin, the Italian, Spanish, and German word for Gypsy, Zingari, etc.”
Finally, they are vendors of charms and philters, conjurers, dancers,
mountebanks, and carvers of wooden bowls.

The professors of these arts wander about in separate bands; but
they must not be confounded with independent tribes of vagabonds and
outcasts of various tribes who lead a roving, thieving Gypsy life,
but are not Gypsy. Their Persian neighbours hold them to have a
separate origin; but identity of feature and language prove them to
be one and the same stock. They divide themselves into two classes,
the Kaoli or Ghurabti, the Kurbat of Syria and the Gavbar. Both names
are of disputed origin, and even the Persians and the Gypsies are at
variance. Kaoli is generally supposed to be a corruption of Kabuli (a
man from Kabul). From this old and venerable city, Sir John Malcolm
states, the Dakrám-i-Gúr imported into Persia twelve thousand singers
and musicians; and the dancing girls of Persia are to this day called
Kaoli. Khurbat, of which Kurbat is a corruption, involves, it is said,
the idea of wandering. Gavbar is equally obscure; the meaning would be
“one who takes pleasure in cattle”; but the Persians call a herdsman
“Gan-ban,” never “Gav-bar.” The true Kaoli and Gavbar, who, like their
brethren in Sindh, Syria, and Egypt, outwardly profess El Islam,
rarely, if ever, intermarry with Persians, Turks, or Arabs. And whilst
the latter regard them as distinct in origin from themselves, in fact
as Hindus, would their wretched Pariahs, the Gáo-bár, claim the honour
of being Sayfids, or descendants of the Apostle?


§ 4. _The Gypsies of Syria._

According to Newbold, the Gypsies of Palestine and South Syria[162] are
called Náwer; while in Asia Minor and North Syria they style themselves
Kurbat, Rumeh, and Jinganeh (Chinganeh). The signification of Kurbat is
doubtful, but is only supposed to mean a wanderer from his own land, a
stranger, derived from the Arab root Gharaba, “he went far away.” The
two last terms he holds related to the Spanish Romani (?) and Zincali,
and the German Zigeuner. They are true to the character of their race;
they disdain to be shepherds or tillers of the soil; and they feed
like vultures and carrion upon the credulity and superstitions of
mankind. Bedawin of the intellectual world, they juggle the simpler
sons and daughters of cities by pretended skill in the occult, more
especially chiromancy. Some are dancers and minstrels, while others
vend charms, philters, and poisons. Like their English brethren, the
men are profound adepts in horseflesh, in donkey-dealing, and in
game-snaring; but instead of tinkering pots and kettles, they spin
cotton and woollen yarns for their clothes and tents, and they make and
mend osier-baskets. This and making wooden boxes were the favourite
handicrafts of the Gypsies when they first entered Europe.

In winter they camp on the outskirts of large towns, in a sort of
half tent, half hut, which is readily removed. During the fine months
they go forth into the plains or mountains, where they affect tents
or ruins, but never far from the haunts of their prey, mankind. Their
migrations, if regular, are not of a great extent; and they never
wholly forsake a country unless driven away by absolute persecution.

Shaykh Rasscho, the head of the Aleppine Gypsies, and responsible for
their poll tax, informed Newbold that his tribe was divided into thirty
houses, of whose names he could only remember twenty-eight. It is not
material to give these names, but they are evidently Muslim names of
men who probably belonged to “heads of houses.” The old Gypsy declared
that Kurbat, Nawar, Rumeli, and Chinganeh were all of the same family,
and had lived in Syria and Asia Minor since the creation.

These people in no way differ physically from the European tinkers.
They have the same slender, well-knit figures, rather below middle
size, tawny skins, rather prominent cheekbones, and straight black
hair. The facial angle is rather Hindu and Tatar than Turkoman,
and they have the Hindu’s long horse-tail hair. Dark eyes are not
invariable; in the mountains of Antioch the colour is sometimes grey
or blue, and the same occurs occasionally among the Arabs of Petra
and Palmyra, among the Syrians, the Zebeks, and other races of Asia
Minor. A great mixture of blood is the cause. The Zebeks of Smyrna have
now been deputed to represent the bandit regular troops of Turkey as
opposed to the bandit police. The Asiatic Gypsy has also that peculiar
indescribable appearance and expression of eye which is so strongly
developed in the Romá of Morocco and Moorish Spain, “a feature which,
like the brand on the forehead of the first murderer, stamps this
marked race over the whole globe, and when once observed is never
forgotten. The ‘Evil Eye’ is not the least of the powers with which
this people is superstitiously invested; and if there be any truth
in the overstrained (?) doctrines of animal magnetism, one could not
possibly frame to the imagination an eye so well calculated, so intense
a magnetic force.”[163]

These Gypsies have never been seen to pray or perform any religious
rite; some of their elders, like the Druzes and other Syrian tribes,
circumcise their children, and conform to the exterior observances of
El Islam.

Shaykh Rasscho could repeat with sundry mistakes the Arabic Faith
Formula, omitting the second half, “Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.”
He said that he and his tribe acknowledged one supreme, everlasting,
omnipotent Being, and believed in an existence after death, a state
of reward and punishment connected with metempsychosis. He denied the
charges made against the Kurbat by Syrians, Muslims, and Christians
that they worshipped the stars or the creative principle under a
symbol. He also denied that they abhorred the eel and the celebrated
black fish of the Antioch Lake, like the Jews, to whom the Mosaic
Law--which, by-the-bye, is equally binding upon Muslims--makes it
unclean, because it lacks fins and scales.[164] Newbold, however, was
assured that the Kurbat, who, like the India Pariahs, are the flayers
of animals dying a natural death, devour the carcases of all animals
except the man and the hog.

According to the Turks and Syrians, the Kurbat girls are not so chaste
as their European sisters; yet they wear till marriage the “lacto
diklo,” a certain cloth, in token and in pledge of spotless virginity,
which the bridegroom alone is permitted to take off. The women dress
like the lower orders in Syria; but they affect more ornaments of
silver and brass, ear-and nose-rings, armlets and bracelets, anklets
and bangles. They spin, take care of the poultry, ducks, cats, and
children, and cook exactly like the English Gypsy women. Especially
they tell fortunes, which practice, confined to a certain caste but
forbidden to others, seems to be a kind of sacerdotalism.

The Kurbat, like their brethren all the world over, have no written
characters or symbols for letters or words. Their Shaykh told Newbold
that, although they themselves could not write, two men in the tribe
could write. As, however, neither the men nor specimens of their
writing were produced, the inference drawn from this, and other similar
inquiries, was that “the written characters, or symbols, of their
language, or rather jargon, have either been lost, or are known to only
a few, who superstitiously keep them secret.”[165] In the bazars of
Syria they speak Arabic or Turkish; at home they use their own tongue.

The following scanty list of Kurbat words was obtained viva voce from
the Aleppo tribes, and were subsequently checked by comparison with
the tribe near Antioch:

VOCABULARY: KURBAT-DUMAN.

  _Kindred._

  _English._        _Kurbat._              _Duman._

  Father            bábúr                  bábúr.
  Mother            aida                   aida _and_ ana.
  Brother           bhairú                 berávau.
  Sister            bhanu                  kochi.

  _Natural Objects._

  Sun               gáham                  gáham.
  Moon              heiúf                  heiúf.
  Star              astara                 astara.
  Air               vál _and_ vái          kannad hává.
  Heavens           khúai                  ghennader.
  The earth         bar, ard (Arab.) _or_  bar.
                      turra
  Fire              ag                     ár.
  Water             páni                   hou (Pers. áb, áo).
  Rain              bursenden              bárán.
  Snow              khíf                   súrg.
  Cloud             barúdi                 bullút.
  Light             tshek                  ar _and_ aidinlik.
  Sea               dúnguz (Turk.)         daíreh _and_ dúnguz.
  Mountain          thull (At. tall)       ghiella.
  A spring          kháni                  kháni.
  Stone             vúth                   káwer.
  Salt              lóu                    khoi.
  Milk              kír (Sanak. Pers.)     shir (pure Persian).
                      _and_ lebben (Ar.)
  Barley            jou (jau)              jou.
  Wheat             gheysúf                ghiannam.
  Iron              náhl                   khallik.
  Night             arát                   shou (Pers. shub,
                                             shao).
  Day               bedis                  ghiundez.
  Onion             lussun, piyaz          piyáz.
  Dhurra (Holcus,   ak                     ar.
    Sorghum)
  Rice              brinj                  silki.

  _Animals, etc._

  A hare            kunder                 kunder.
  Dog               súrunter               kúchek.
  Cat               psík                   kadizor.
  Horse             ghora _or_ aghora      asp.
  Mare              míno                   míno.
  Ass               kharr                  kharri.
  Sheep             bakrá                  khaidú.
  Cow               góru                   kaikuz.
  Bull              grouf, _or_ maia góru  meshjúk.
  Fowl              jeysh-chumári          mirrishk.
  Pig               dónguz (Turk.)         dónguz.
  Camel             aubba, asht            ashtur.
  Crow              kíl, hashzeik _and_    sereh.
                      tánuk
  Snake             sánb, sámp             marr (Pers.).
  Fish              machchi                machchi.

  _Parts of the Human Body._

  Finger            anglú, ángul           pechi.
  Hand              kustúm, kustúr         dast.
  Eye               akki _and_ ánkhi       jow.
  Hair              vál _or_ bál           khalluf.
  Ear               kán _and_ kannir       príúk.
  Neck              gúrgúr                 kántlagu.
  Knee              lúlúk, chokyúm         koppaku.
  Teeth             dándeir                ghiólu.
  Head              sir, chir              murrás.
  Flesh             mársi                  gósht.

  _Miscellaneous Nouns._

  A well            astal, chál            chál.
  An egg            ánó                    heili.
  A ring            angúshteri             dastúri.
  God               Khánarje               Allah.
  A ship            ghemmi, durongaye      ghemmi.
  Boat              shátúr                 shátúr.
  War               lagísh, káwye          káwye.
  A Christian       kuttúr (dog?)          nosaru (Nazarene).
  Door              Kápi (Turk.)           kapi.
  Boy               chágú                  láwak.
  Girl              lafti                  kechikeh.
  Thief             kuft                   khaiúk.
  Tent              cháder (Pers.)         cháder.
  Knife             chírí                  khair.
  Rope              kundóri                kundóri _and_ sijúm.
  Book              kitál                  kitáh, mushulleh.
  City              viár                   viár.
  Village           deh, diyár             deh, diyár.
  Bridge            kienpri (Turk.)        kienpri.
  Castle            killa                  kalla.
  Paper             kághaz                 kághaz.
  Bread             manna                  nán.
  House             kuri _or_ kiri         málá.
  King              padshah                beghirtmish.
  Love              mankamri _and_ kamri   kamri.
  Month             muh, mas               viha, mas.
  Colour            táwúl                  táwul.
  Year              das di mas, varras     deh di mar _or_ dah di
                      _or_ barras            viha.

  _Personal and Possessive Pronouns._

  I                 man                     man.
  Thou              tó                      to.
  He                húi                     húi.
  Mine              maki _or_ man ki        maki _or_ man ki.
  Thine             to ki _or_ toi ki       to ki _or_ toi ki.
  His               hui ki                  hui ki.

  _Cardinal Numbers._

  One               ek.                     The Duman is the
  Two               di.                     same, except _sih_ for
  Three             turrun.                 “three,” and _deh_ for
  Four              char _or_ shtar.        “ten.”
  Five              penj.
  Six               shesh.
  Seven             heft.
  Eight             hesht.
  Nine              na _or_ nu.
  Ten               das.
  Eleven            das ek.
  Twelve            das di.
  Thirteen          das turrun.
  Fourteen          das char.
  Fifteen           das penj.
  Sixteen           das shesh.
  Seventeen         das heft.
  Eighteen          das hesht.
  Nineteen          das na.
  Twenty            víst _or_ bíst.
  Twenty-one        víst ek.
  Twenty-two, etc.  víst di, etc.
  Thirty            si.
  Forty             chhil.
  Fifty             penjeh.
  Sixty             turrun víst.
  Seventy           turrun víst das.
  Eighty            chár víst.
  Ninety            chár víst das.
  One hundred       sad.
  Two hundred       di sad.
  A thousand        hazar.

  _Adjectives._

  Sick              numshti                bímár, ruár.
  Bad               kumnarrey              kíóná.
  Good              gahay                  arunder.
  Great             durónkay, burro        mázin.
  Small             túróntay, thoranki     chúchúk (Pers.
                                             kuchik).
  Black             kálá, kálo             káni, shippia.
  White             pannarey               suffeid.
  Red               lorey, loley           kunnu.
  Yellow            zard                   zara, kulp.
  Green             kark                   sukkul.
  Blue              niley                  níla.
  Cold              siá                    súki.
  Hot               tottey                 khunney.

  _Adverbs._

  Much              bhúyih                 phurga.
  A little          thoráki                ennika.
  Enough            basey                  nar.
  Here              veshli, itan, idhur    búndeh.

  _Verbs._

  To come           pá ┓                   pa.
  To go             jó ┚ imperative        jo.
  To eat            khm ┓                  khám.
  To drink          piún│ imperative       piúm.
  To bring          nán ┚                  winni.
  To tell fortune   fál wunnakerim.

[The above list is printed exactly as written by Burton; but it has
been found impossible to verify it from other sources.]


§ 5. _The Gypsies of the Haurán, South-Eastern Syria._

In January, 1871, I accompanied the Damascus Pilgrim Caravan some
marches; and at Mazáríb in the Haurán, the well-known station near
which Ali Beg el Abbasi, the Spaniard, was poisoned, I found three
Gypsy tents. The inmates called themselves Nawar, a popular term
throughout the country. In the same way as the Romá of Spain affected
to be devout Christians “living in a peaceable Catholic manner,”
so the head of the little party I discovered insisted upon all his
people being born Muslims, evidently disliking the suspicion that
they belonged to the “obsolete faith,” Christianity, with which the
ignorant faithful confused all later creeds. (These people thus saved
themselves from exile when Sultan “Báyezíd” expelled all Gypsies from
the Ottoman Empire.) In proof of his assertion he recited a verse
of the Koran with peculiar twang. The headquarters of the tribe and
the abode of the chief Shaykh were at Ghazzeh, and Muhammad and his
“lamentable retinue” had wandered northwards, intending to stay four or
five days at Mazáríb--in fact, whilst the caravan was passing. Their
peculiar industries were metal-work and making sieves, so they stated;
but to these their neighbours added plundering and petty larceny,
together with trading in asses and horses. According to my informant,
many of his people attend the Haj, doubtless to throw dust into Muslim
eyes.

My Syrian companions compared the general look of the dark-skinned,
tanned dwellers with the Ashdán, whilst they found a certain
resemblance between the Roumís and the women of a certain Arab tribe
who camped about near Damascus; but the long, coarse, lank hair, with
the duck-tail under curl, the brown white eyes, whose peculiar glance
is never to be mistaken, the prominent Tatar-like cheekbones, and the
irregular-shaped mouths, suggested Hindu origin and physiognomy. The
beard was long and somewhat wavy, possibly the result of inhabiting
for generations a hot dry land. Some have gashed faces like the
“Bohemians” when they first entered Paris. Their women, adorned with
ear-rings and necklaces, bracelets and anklets of brass and tinsel,
were Macbethian witches; and both sexes, like the outcasts of India
generally, seem to abhor cold water. I tried them with a few words of
Sindhi, introduced into Hindustani, when their faces assumed the normal
puzzled expression, and their eyes appeared to close and film over.
Of magic and divination they would not speak to a stranger; but they
readily gave me the following words: Ag, fire (pure Hindi); Ake, eye
(Aukh); Chirí, knife (Churi); Goray, horse (Ghora); Kálá, oracle (pure
Hindi); Munám, bread (an Arabic corruption?); Pánay, water (Pani);
Zari, mouth (?). Conversing with one another they spoke fluently, and
introduced few Arabic words.

The Nawar make their appearance with the Eastern Bedawin, Wuld Ali, and
others about the beginning of summer, and occupy huts built of cane,
sticks, and mud. The roofs are hides weighted with sticks. They work
at getting in the harvests, and they are said to work much harder than
the average husbandman. Of course they are charged with plundering
poultry. They speak bad Arabic, and talk together in their own tongue;
wherefore the peasants affect to despise them. In fact, here, as
elsewhere, they constitute a strange sort of commonwealth amongst
themselves--wanderers, impostors, and jugglers.


§ 6. _The Gypsies of Damascus._

Consul E. T. Rogers, my predecessor at Damascus, made the following
brief notes, and obliged me with permission to publish them. His long
period of residence led him to study subjects which escaped the passing
traveller.

“I remember quite distinctly that the Gypsies of Syria, or people
resembling them, were divided into three distinct families, not
supposed to intermarry, and, as I was told, supplying two distinct
languages:

“(1) The Nawar[166] follow the ordinary Gypsy vocations, stealing,
fortune-telling, tinkering, attending fêtes and marriages as itinerant
musicians, jugglers, etc.;

“(2) The Zutt were generally seen with trained animals, goats, donkeys,
etc., performing in the streets; and

“(3) The Barámaki, who give more attention to horse-dealing. They are
farriers and blacksmiths, and are generally found on the outskirts of
isolated villages, or near the camps of small Arab tribes, where they
let out stallions for breeding purposes. They buy broken-down horses
and mares of good breed, and are very clever at doctoring them up and
rendering them fit for sale.”

Mr. Consul Rogers also showed me a sketch he had made of a Zutti boy
with a performing goat borne upon sections of bamboo--a common sight in
India.

FOOTNOTES:

[156] _Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Officer, etc._ (London:
Hatchard.)

[157] Colonel Sleeman, however, fails to identify his “Jâts” with the
Gypsies.

[158] [“As I have frequently mentioned, all the Gypsies were regularly
trained to a peculiar method of their own in handling the cudgel in
their battles. I am inclined to think that part of the Hungarian sword
exercise at present practised in our cavalry is founded upon the Gypsy
manner of attack and defence, including even the direct thrust to the
front, which the Gypsies perform with the cudgel.”--SIMSON, _A History
of the Gypsies_.]

[159] Inadmissible, because there are Afghan Jats.

[160] [_Balochistan, Balochis., etc._, _sic_ Hughes.]

[161] A celebrated Beloch tribe which considers itself the flower of
the nation.

[162] [“Bishop Pococke, prior to 1745, mentions having met with Gypsies
in the northern part of Syria, where he found them in great numbers,
passing for Mahommedans, living in tents or caravans, dealing in
milch cows when near towns, manufacturing coarse carpets, and having
a much better character than their relations in Hungary or England”
(_Simson_).]

[163] The Spaniards describe this peculiarity of the race, the
remarkably brilliant eye, as opposed to the small fat-lidded organ of
the Jew and the pig’s eye of the Chinaman.

[164] “And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is
unclean unto you” (Deut. xiv. 10).

[165] The same is the case with the Bedawin tribal marks.

[166] The tribal name in Syria is Nawar. During two years’ residence
and long travelling I never heard the terms “Dumi” and “Zutt.” The
latter also escaped a most careful observer, Captain Newbold. As
regards that officer’s distinction between Jat and Jât, he heard the
former term from me at Karachi in 1848 when he looked over my Grammar
and Vocabulary, while he borrowed Jât from Captain Sleeman and others
who have written on the Panjab with perceiving that the two tribes are
one and the same.



CHAPTER VI

THE GYPSY IN AFRICA


§ 1. _The Egyptian Ghajar or Ghagar_

If there is anything persistent in Gypsy tradition, it is the assertion
that the Gypsies originally came from the banks of the Nile--that
Egypt, in fact, gave them a local habitation and a name. Yet, curious
to say, this is the country, and the only country, where a tribe of the
Romá, preserving the physiognomy and the pursuits of its ancestors,
has apparently lost its old Aryan tongue, or rather has exchanged it
for a bastard _argot_, mostly derived from Arabic.[167] Nor does this
phenomenon seem to be of modern date. A very rare Italian comedy of the
middle sixteenth century, _La Cingana_, pronounced “Tchingana,” was
expected to yield treasures of philological lore; but on investigation
it proved that the Gypsies spoke only a corrupt Arabic.

The following pages are mostly taken from the well-known work
_Aegypten_, etc. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1860), by the famous Orientalist,
Alfred von Kremer. As will be seen, he made a careful study of the
“Zigeuner” or “Aegypten,” the “Ghagar”; whereas these interesting
families of the Gypsy race, a people of wanderers, who have nowhere a
house, and who have everywhere a home, are most perfunctorily treated
of by Lane.

“On the banks of the Nile,” says Von Kremer, whose words I shall
now quote, as in other places, “the Ghagar men, like the Polloi of
Herodotus, are tinkers, ape-leaders, rope-dancers, and snake-charmers;
whilst the women are Áhnahs, prostitutes, and fortune-tellers. They are
very numerous; they trade in asses, horses, and camels, and, as pedlars
(Baddaah), they manage almost all the _petit commerce_ of the country.
The Ghagar buy goods wholesale in Cairo, and frequent the two annual
fairs of Tantá; that of May was instituted about 1853, and entitled
the Maulid El Shilkáni (birth-festival of the Shaykh El Shilkáni),
who is buried some three hours’ march from Beni Suef. Thus they not
unfrequently become rich.

“The Háwi[168] (snake-charmers) and the snake-eaters (Rifaijjeh)
live at Cairo; and many travellers have seen the disgusting spectacle
without suspecting that the Dervish’s frock covered the ‘tinkler.’
These classes are useful to the naturalist, as they have always a
supply of live or dead serpents, with and without poison-fangs,
lizards, uromastix, jerboas, jackals, wolves, ferrets (_Stinkthiere_),
and so forth. They find and catch serpents with surprising dexterity:
armed with a bit of palm frond to tap the walls and ceilings, and
with a pipe whose tones draw the reptiles from their hiding-places,
they rarely fail to make captures, as the older houses of Cairo are
mostly haunted by harmless snakes. This proceeding of course awes the
ignorant, and none dare to engage a room when the Háwi has declared it
to be snake-possessed.

“The term ‘Ghagar’ or ‘Ghajar’ is general; the people, according
to their own account, are divided into tribes, who all, however,
represent themselves to be pure Arabs and wandering immigrants from the
West.[169] The date of this movement is apparently unknown; but its
reality is confirmed by the fact that all, without exception, belong
to the Maliki school, prevailing in Morocco and in North-West Africa.
They are vagrants by profession, and obtain written permission to
travel, either from the police or from the Guild Shaykh of the Rifai
Dervishes.

“The most numerous tribe everywhere in Egypt is the Ghawázi;[170]
in every city, town, and village there are representatives of these
arch-seductresses, whose personal beauty makes them dangerous. They
call themselves Baramaki,[171] and derive themselves from the Persian
Barmekides, the historical house ruined and annihilated by the Khalif
Harun-er-Raschid. Yet they are very proud of their Bedawin descent;
and they lead the lives of the sons of the desert, dwelling in tents,
which they carry from fair to fair. The maidens are dancers, the
old women spae-wives;[172] the girls rarely marry before securing a
competency, and they often take their slaves to husband. The Gháziyah’s
goodman is generally nothing more than a servant, who brings her new
acquaintances, and who pipes or drums when she dances. There are cases
of these girls marrying village chiefs; and their after-lives are as
correct as their youth was dissolute (compare p. 145, Burckhardt’s
_Arabic Proverbs_: London, 1830). The Ghawázi speak the Gypsy jargon
which is in use amongst all the other tribes.

“The Gypsies of the Sa'íd (Upper Egypt), who call themselves ‘Saáideh,’
have purely Asiatic, not African, features, with dark brown skins,
piercing black eyes, and lank hair, also black. The women tattoo
their lips, hands, and bosoms generally in blue, wear heavy brass
ear-rings, and hang round their necks strings of blue and red beads.
They divine by muscle-shells, broken bits of glass, coloured stones as
agates and jaspers, pieces of stained wax, and so forth, carried upon
the shoulders in a kirbah, or bag, generally of gazelle-skin. After
taking her seat on the mat or carpet, the woman empties her sack, and,
choosing one article which shall represent the person who pays, draws
her revelations from the grouping. Money is required at various stages
of the process; and at the end the Gypsy presents some bits of stone
or coloured wax by way of charms to her employer.[173]

“These people may be seen in the streets of Cairo, dressed like the
Felláhah (peasant woman), in taubs, or long shirts of home-made
indigo-dyed cotton, but lacking the shintiyán (drawers) and the burka'
(nose-bag). Their features at once distinguish them from the Muslims
and the Copts; and they are noted, moreover, by the sheep-skin or
gazelle-skin thrown, besides the bag, over their shoulders. They
frequent the bazars, and stroll about the principal thoroughfares of
the great towns, especially in summer-time, as the Nile begins to rise;
and their favourite cries are ‘Nibejjin-ez-zein!’ (We show the good,
_i.e._ luck), ‘Ta'ál! shuf el Bakht’ (Come and see your fortunes), and
‘Nidmor el Ghaib!’ (We find the lost).

“The capital contains a large company of Ghagar women, who speculate
upon public credulity; and their quarter is the Hosh Bardak, once a
fine quarter, now a squalid hole behind that noble pile the Sultan
Hasan Mosque. I visited it in November, 1877, and found the courts
still occupied. The people, tinkers and blacksmiths, who sell
ear-rings, bracelets, amulets, and other metal articles, exactly
resembled Fellahs to a superficial glance. Apparently they had
forgotten their favourite craft, fortune-telling. Moreover, they did
not like the term Ghagar. There is, or rather was, another colony
at Masr el 'Atíkah (Babylon or Old Cairo). A third used to camp
chiefly during winter and spring near a village on the right of the
Cairo-Shubrá road, and I believe they are still there. Their rivals,
the Maghribí (North-West African) magicians, and those from the central
regions, of which Darfur[174] supplies the greatest number, are known
by their sitting in the streets and performing upon cards or sand.[175]
Predicting by marks drawn on the sand (Ilm el Raml) is old in the East,
and plays a great part in the _Arabian Nights_.

“Other tribal names are H'aleb or Helebi (Aleppine), Schah'āini, and
_T_a_t_ar (T'at'ar). The men of the last class, almost all farriers or
tinkers, are also termed A'wwādāt or Mua'merrātijjeh.[176] Amongst the
other Ghagar there are many smiths, who make the brass rings worn on
the fingers and arm-joints, in the ears and nose, and around the neck.

“The monkey-leaders so numerous in Cairo, especially about the
Ezbekijjeh quarter,[177] the Kuraydati,[178] so called from Kird,
an ape, also belong to the Gypsy tribes; and these mostly supply
the Bahlawán,[179] gymnasts or strong-men, athletes, and especially
wrestlers, who frequent fairs and festivals. During the 'Id ed
Dahijjeh[180] they swarm in the capital.[181]

“All these subdivisions speak the same Rothwelsch, or ‘Thieves’ Latin,’
which they call El Sím. It explains the idea prevailing in the middle
of the last century; namely, that the Gypsy language was an invented
tongue; a ‘Germania,’ as the Spaniards say; a conventional jargon; a
jail-bird’s speech, varying with every horde.[182] The origin and full
import of the term Sím are undetermined; but it is understood to mean
something hidden or secret;[183] and it is applied to the impure and
gilt ‘gold-wires’ imported from Austria. It is said, however, that
the Bahlawán above use another speech; of this I have been unable to
collect proofs, nor do I hold the information wholly credible.”

The following vocabulary was compiled by Von Eremer at Cairo, where
he persuaded many of the Ghagar to frequent the Consulate, especially
Muhammad Merwán, who pompously styled himself “Shaykh of all the
Snake-charmers of Egypt.” He also consulted many Gypsy women from Upper
Egypt; these appeared to speak a somewhat different dialect, and the
words taken from them are distinguished by an S. The numerals, all save
one corrupted Arabic, are as follows:

NUMERALS.

  1, Mach[184] (Etruscan, Max): according to Newbold (_loc. cit._),
      Helebi, Ek; Náwer, Yek.

  2, Machayu (evidently a dual form purely Arabic): Hel. Dúi; Naw. Dú.

  3, Tulit (S), or Telát (Salás) Máchát (three ones): Hel. Dúi-ek
      (_i.e._ 2 + 1), or Sih (Pers.); Naw. Súso (Sih).

  4, Rúbi' (S), or Arba'ah Máchát (four ones), and so forth: Hel. and
      Naw. Chár, or Dúi fi dúi (the fi being pure Arabic “in”).

  5, Khúmis (S), or Shammáleh (_i.e._ the hand): Hel. Penk, Peng; Naw.
      Fowi.

  6, Sutet (S): Hel. and Naw. Penk-ek (5 + 1).

  7, Súbi': Hel. and Naw. Penk-i-dúi (5 + 2).

  8, Túmin (S): Hel. and Naw. Ister or Heshter (Nasht, Pers.).

  9, Tiwa' (S): Hel. and Naw. Enna, Nau, or Peng-i-dui-fi dúi (5 + 2
      in 2).

  10, Ushir (S): Hel. Das, Des, Desh; Naw. Halaheh.

Evidently Von Kremer’s numerals are altered just enough to be hardly
intelligible in a sentence hurriedly spoken; whilst Newbold’s are
Persian and Hindi.[185]

VOCABULARY.[186]

  Water, _Móge_ (evidently Máych, Moyyeh), _Himbe_ (S). Newbold: H.
      Hembi, Sheribni (Pers.), or Pani (Hindi); G. Páni; and N. Óah.

  *Bread, _Shenúb, Bishleh_ (S).

  Father, _Ab_ (Arab.) or _A'rub_;[187] my father, _Abamru_ or _A'rubi_.

  *Mother, _Kodde_, plur. _Kadáid_; my mother, _Koddéti_; it also means
      generically woman: H. Ammámri; G. Kuddi.

  *Brother, _Sem'a_ or _Khawíj_ (from Akkawí, adj. brotherly?); my
      brother, _Sem'ai_; thy brother, _Sema'ak_ or _Khawijak_;[188]
      also generically a boy, lad, youth: H. Huwiji; G. Búrdi.

  Sister, _Sema'ah_[189] or _Ukht_ (pure Arabic); thy sister,
      _Sem'atak_: H. Khawishti; G. Marash; N. Maras: also generically
      a girl, lass, e.g. _Sema'ah bahíleh_, a pretty girl.

  *Night,[190] _Ghalmúz'a_: H. Dámúd; G. Rátse.

  *Horse, _Soh'lí_ (Sohl, neighing), _Husánáish_ (S) (from Husán, a
      stallion): H. Sohli; G. Ghera (Hind.).

  *Ass, _Zuwell_: H. Zowilli; G. Kharís (Pers. Khar).

  *Camel, _Hantif_: H. Huntif; G. Hunt (Hind.), Ashtr (Pers.).

  Buffalo, _En Naffákheh_ (from the Arab Nafkh, blowing, the blower?).

  *Lamb, _Mizghál, Minga'esh_ (from classical Arabic Naja'ah) (S),
      _Khurraf_ (Arab. Kharúf) (S).[191]

  Tree, _Khudrumán_ (Akhdar, green?), _Shagaráish_ (Arab. Shajar) (S).

  Flesh, _A'dwaneh Mahzuzah_ (S).

  Fowl, _En-Nebbásheh_ (Nabsh, scratching the ground): H. Churīya
      (Hind.); G. Kagmiyeh; N. Burah.

  *Fat (subst.), Barúah.

  Ghost, angel, devil, _Astrúm_ (Shúm, Arab, ill-omened?).

  Hell, _Ma-anwára_, ma, the thing which is light, _i.e._ fire, from
      núr, anwár, light, lights (e.g. _add el-ma-anwara_, light the
      fire); not the Sa'idi, El-Mugánwara (S).

  Date, _Ma'ahli, Mahalli_ (S) (the thing sweet).

  Gold, _El-ma-asfar_ (the thing yellow for El-má-asfar, a
      transposition), _Midhabesh_ (S) (corrupted from Dahab).

  *Silver, Bítúg.

  Iron, _Hadidaish_ (Arab. Hadid): H. Megan; G. Sista; N. Shir.

  *Corn, _Duhúbi, Duhúba_ (S): H. Dahuba; G. Ghiú; N. Ghiudem (Pers.
      Gaudum).

  Hunter, _Dabaibi_ (from Díb, a wolf-hunter?).

  *Magician, Tur'ai.

  Stone, _Hogger_ (Arab. Hajar, Hagar; dimin. Hujayr): H. Hajar; G.
      Path.

  *Land, region, _Anta_, plur. _Anáti_.[192]

  *Uncle, _A'rúb_; and Aunt, _A'rubeh_.

  Milk,[193] _Raghwán, Hirwán_ (S) (Arab. Raghwah, foam of milk).

  Onion, _Musanúm, Mubsalcheh_ (S) (Arab. Basal): H. Musmunum; G. Piyaz
      (Pers.).

  Cheese, _El-Mehartemeh, Mahárteme_ (S).[194]

  *Soured milk, _Atreshent, Mishsh_ (the Arabic Laban).

  Millet, Handawil, Mugaddiriyyeh (S) (the dish Mujadderah, rice and
      lentils mixed, from Judrá, the small-pox).

  *Beans, _Buhus_.[195]

  *Dog, _Sanno_: H. and G. Sunno.

  Wolf, _Dibaish_ (Arab. Dib).

  Knife, _El-Khúsah_: H. Tillúmeh; G. Matwa, Churi (Hind.); N. Chiri.

  Foot, _Darrágeh_ (Arab. Daraj, a step), _er-raghaleh_ (Arab. rijl,
      rigl) (S), _Mumeshayát_ (S) (Mashi, walking).

  Head, _Kamúkhah, Dumákheh_ (S) (Pers. Damágh, brain): H. Ras; G. Sir
      (Hind.), Sherit, Kamokhti.

  Eye, _Bassáseh_ (Bassáseh, she that sees?), _Huzzárah_ (S): H.
      Hazára; G. Ankhi (Hind.).

  *Thief, _Damáni_: H. Gowáti; G. Dumáni, Kálo; N. Showústi.

  Hand,[196] _Shammáleh_ (Arab. Shamala, he collected; Shimál, the
      left-hand?), also two number five: H. Kumáshteh; G. Gadno, Kustúr
      (Augushti?), Chang (Pers.); N. Fowítak.

  North, _Baharaish_ (from Bahar, the sea, _i.e._ towards the
      Mediterranean).

  South, _Kiblaish_ (Kibleh, Arab, the fronting-place, _i.e._ Mecca).

  East, _Sharkaish_ (Arab. Shark; hence probably Saracen).

  West, _Gharbaish_ (Gharb, whence probably Maurus, a Moor).

  Coffee, _Magáswade_ (Má aswad, that which is black).

  *Clothes,[197] _Sarme_ (S).

  Shoe, _Merkubáish_ (Arab. Merkáb).

  Nose, _Zenúnáish_.

  Ear, _Widu_ (Arab. Uzu); thy ear, _Widuamrak_[198] (S) or _Mudáusheh_
      (S): H. Wudu; G. Kirkawiyeh.

  Cow, _Mubgársheh_ (S) (Arab. Bakar): H. Mubgursha; G. Góm (Goa,
      Pers.?).

  Bull, _Mutwáresh_ (S) (Arab. Taur): H. Mutwarish; G. Maia, Góno (male
      cow?).

  River, _Mistabhar_ (S) (from Bahr, sea or river).

  Palm (tree), _Minkhalesh_ (S) (Arab. Nakhl).

  Tent, _El-Mikkwáshesh_ (S) (Arab. Khaysheh).

  Wood, _Makhshabesh_ (S) (Arab. Khashab).

  Straw, _Tibuáish_ (Arab. Tibu).

  Christ, _El-Annawi_ (el-Nabbí, _The_ Prophet?).

  *Egg, _Mugahrada_ (S): H. Mejáhaled; G. Wáin.

  Fire,[199] _El-Mugáuwara_, (S): light the fire, _Walláish
      el-Mugáuwara_.

  *Food, _esh-Shimleh_.

  Sack, _Migrábesh_ (Arab. Kirbeh, Girbeh).

  Arm, _El-Kemmásheh_; my hand hurts, _Kemmashtu waga'ani_ (Arab.
      Kamasha, he collected, picked up; the last word pure Arab.).

  Hair, _Sha'aráish_ (S) (Arab. Sha'ar): H. Hára; G. Bál or Vál (Hind.).

  *Tobacco, _Tiftaf_ (S) (possibly formed like the Turk. Tutun).

  Mountain, _Migbalish_ (S) (Arab. Jebel, Egypt. Gebel, whence
      Monte-Gibello): H. Gebel (Arab.); G. Melúsh, Durum; N. Koh
      (Pers.).

  *Nasty (adj.), Shalaf.[200]

VERBS.

  *Go, _Fell_; I went, _Felleit_ (Arab, termination--ayter, ayt). To
      go: H. Fil; G. Já (Hind.).

  Come, _E'utib_ (S); he came, _Gádat_. To come: H. Ig; G. Utelo or á
      (Hind.).

  *Say, _Agmu_; I said, _Agemtu_.

  Strike, _Il'big_; he struck, _H'abash, Habash_ (S) (Himyaritic?); he
      still strikes, _Hay yihbig_ (Ha fa háza el wakt; vulgar Egyptian).

  *We ate, _Rakkhayná_ or _Shamalna_ (Arab. we gathered). To eat: H.
      Eshna, Shemb; G. Khaba, Jála; N. Arkus.

  Sit, _Watib_.

  We drank, _Mawwajná_ (from Manj, a wave?); I drank, _Mawwagt_,
      _Hamball_ (S). To drink: H. Hunnib; G. Mowwak.

  He cut, _Shafar_.

  He called, cried, _Nabbat'a_.

  *He died, _Entena_.

  He killed, slew, _Tena_; he kills, _Yitni_.

  *He sleeps, _Yidmukh_; I slept, _Dammacht_. To sleep: H. Dumak; G.
      Sobelar; N. Suk.

  *He rides, _Yita'alwan_.

  *He gives, _Yikif_; he gave, _Kaf_.

  *He steals, _Yiknisk_; he stole, _Kanash_. To rob: H. Gunwani; G.
      Churabi (Hind.); N. Lahis.

  *He cooks, _Yittabig_; he cooked, _Tabag_ (Arab. Tabaxa).

  He saw, _Haseb_.

  *He laughs, _Biarr'a_.

  *Sit, _Ukriz_.

  Stand up, _Utib_.

  *He married, _Etkaddad_.

“From these philological facts,” says Von Kremer, in conclusion, “I
draw no inference, the material being perhaps too scanty to warrant
deductions. It is very regrettable that the old original words are
dropping out of use, being replaced by a cant or jargon from Arabic
according to a purely conventional plan, a changing of the ending,
like Kiblas for Kibla. It is also evident that the Ghagar have sunk in
favour of the vernacular their own peculiar names for colours, for the
sun and moon, for earth and fire, and for other terms of universal use.”

In Newbold’s vocabulary, on the other hand, we have distinct signs of
an Eastern, not a Western provincialism, as the author says: “There
is a marked difference in the three dialects, or jargons; that of
the Ghagar most resembles the language of the Kurbat, or Gypsies of
Syria. The Gypsy dialect in Borrow’s work contains more words of Indian
origin than the Helebi and Nawar jargon. The Helebi comprises a large
number of words of Arabic root, indicating a long sojourn in Yemen, or
other parts of Arabia. Its numerals, which are also used by the Ghagar
when secrecy is required, bear strong marks of Eastern, or Persian,
origin. Usually the Helebis adopt the vulgar Arabic numerals in use
throughout Egypt.[201] ... The numerals of the Nawars are evidently of
Persian origin.... All the tribes disclaim having any written character
peculiar to themselves,[202] and it is rare to find one among them
who can write the common Arabic of the country. I have been informed,
however, by a respectable Copt that they have secret symbols which they
sedulously conceal. It seems to me probable that the whole of these
tribes had one common origin in India and the adjacent countries on its
western frontier, and that the difference in the jargons they now speak
is owing to their sojourn in the various countries through which they
have passed. It is certain that the Gypsies are strangers and outcasts
in the land which has given them a name, and which has long been
supposed to have given them birth.”

In Sindh I met Captain Newbold, and, assisted by my late friend James
Macleod, then Collector of Customs at Karachi, supplied him with a
short vocabulary. His studies gained breadth by noting the manners and
habits of a singular wandering tribe called the Jats, whose remarkable
physical appearance reminded him strongly of the Gypsies of Egypt and
Syria. He saw a tribe living in tents and rude movable huts in the wood
of Balut, near Jujah, between Karachi and the Indus. Hence he drew the
following conclusions:

“Since my visit to the banks of the Indus, I am more than ever
convinced that from the borders of this classic river originally
migrated the horde of Gypsies that are scattered over Europe, Asia, and
the northern confines of Africa. The dialects spoken by the numerous
tribes which swarm upon the territories adjacent to the Indus, from
the sea to the snowy mountains of Himalaya and Tatary, have, with those
spoken by the Gypsies, a certain family resemblance, which, like their
physical features, cannot be mistaken. I find it impossible at present
to place my hand on any particular tribe, and say, ‘This is the parent
stock of the Gypsies’; but as far as my researches have gone, I am
rather inclined to think that this singular race derives its origin,
not from one alone, but from several tribes that constitute the family
of mankind dwelling on, or adjacent to, the banks of the Indus.”

Captain Newbold’s studies in Egypt, where he was assisted by the
Shaykhs of the Romá, complete those of Von Kremer, and prove that
the latter had chiefly noticed the Ghawázi and Ghagar families. The
former would divide the vagrants into two--the Helebis and their wives,
the Fehemis (wise women), who practise palmistry and divination,
and look down with supreme contempt upon their distant kinsmen the
Ghagar or Ghajar, whose better halves are musicians and rope-dancers.
The Helebis, who evidently derive their name from H'abel (Aleppo),
claim to be derived from El Yemen, and declare that in the early
history of their race a great king persecuted and expelled them.
The tribe then wandered over Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Europe under
some brother-chiefs, whose tombs are still held holy to this day.
The Helebis confined their wandering to the Rif or Nile Valley and
the Delta. They rarely go deep into the desert, except when they
sally forth to sell cattle medicines, or to buy jaded beasts from the
returning pilgrim caravans, and a few perform the pilgrimage in order
to win the title of Hagi.

The Shaykhs speak of four tribes scattered about Egypt, and each
comprising fifty families, a number of which Newbold had reason to
believe is much and designedly underrated. According to the Helebis,
the sworn chiefs obtained from the sovereign of Egypt the right of
wandering unmolested about the country, and the privilege of exemption
from taxes. Muhammad Ali Pasha compelled them, however, to pay a poll
tax, which accounts for their numbering only two hundred instead of
perhaps five thousand families. In 1847 the pasha had ordered the
people not residing in their native villages to return to them, causing
great distress and scenes of violence and misery. The Gypsies took
the hint, struck their tents by night, decamped bag and baggage, and
disappeared altogether. They are expert in disguises, and do not yield
the palm to European brethren in cunning and deception. Remarkably
intelligent and quick in gaining information, they would make capital
spies in an enemy’s camp. The women during their halts on the outskirts
of towns and villages, and in running about the streets, bazars, and
coffeehouses, pick up with wonderful tact and accuracy all requisite
information concerning the private history of those on whom they may be
expected to exercise their vocation of fortune-telling. In this secret
intelligence department they are aided by the men, who, it is said, are
numerous in official employment, although unknown to be Gypsies. At all
events they mingle with residents on the spot, and with strangers in
the caravanserais and other public places.

The Helebis, leading a vagabond, wandering life, usually pitch tents or
portable huts on the outskirts of towns and large villages. The former
resemble in all points those of the pauper Bedawin, and contained
little beyond wretched horse and ass furniture, mats, cooking-pots, and
similar necessaries. Everything denotes externally the most squalid
poverty, except only the enormous mass of fowl, mutton, and savoury
vegetables seething in the large caldron suspended from the familiar
crossed sticks over the embers of a large fire, thus proving to more
senses than one that the care of the flesh-pots of ancient Egypt has
not devolved upon a race insensible to their charms. All deny the
common charge of eating dogs, cats, and other meat held impure by
Muslims.

The male Helebis are ostensibly dealers in horses and asses, camels and
black cattle. They pretend to great skill in the veterinary art; but
their character for honesty does not stand high with those who know
them best. Without known religion, priests, or houses of prayer, this
tribe, like the Ghagar and all others, conform to El Islam, or to the
predominant religion whenever policy or convenience demands. They bury
their dead, but have no fixed places of interment. The men will marry
Ghagar damsels, but will not give their daughters to Ghagar. The zone
of chastity is even made, they say, of plaited things like that of the
Nubian, and is cut off on the wedding night. The women, though chaste
themselves, will act as Mercuries to the Gentile male and female; and
they have been charged with sundry indecencies for money. The Muslims
and Copts declare that they kidnap children, and they of course swear
they do not. The women never intermarry with strangers, and in this
respect they are as rigid as the Hindus. They are not remarkable for
cleanliness either of person or apparel. In this respect, and in their
passion for trinkets of brass, silver, and ivory, they remind one of
certain native women of India. Their special privilege is the practice
of palmistry and divination. The Fehemi takes the inquirer’s right hand
by the finger tips, and bends them gently backward so as to render the
lines more visible. She mutters a spell while with all gravity she
reads the book of destiny, and then reads the result; of course her
hand must be crossed with silver. Palmistry, I must add, is one of the
many superstitions to which India gave birth, and all the world over
the lines and mounts and spaces and other distributions of the hands
are the same.

Newbold says comparatively little of the Ghagar, who claim to be of
the same stock as the Helebis, and who speak of brethren in Hungary,
while the original tongue is preserved. Comparatively poor in physical
appearance and in vagabond habits, they bear a family resemblance
to the Helebis and to the Syrian Kurbat. During the summer months
they wander about the cultivated land, and pitch tents and Kaysh. A
favourite way of gaining a livelihood is by carrying water-jars, and
by singing at the birthday fêtes of saints, etc., during the fine
season. In wandering they prefer the towns. In ancient Arabia they have
Ghettos, as at Old Cairo and elsewhere.

Being subject to the poll tax, they have an interest in understating
their numbers, which can scarcely be less than sixteen thousand.
When the publican is abroad, they quietly abscond across the Nile,
and take refuge in some village on the skirts of the desert. After
paying a first visit to them, which aroused their suspicion, Newbold
returned the following day, and to his surprise found the quarter quite
deserted. Subsequently, however, a better acquaintance was established.

With few exceptions the Ghagar are all thieves. Ostensibly the men are
athletes, monkey-leaders, and mountebanks attending several fairs.
They are also metal-workers and horse-dealers. The women are not
allowed to practise palmistry and divination, consequently they are
despised by the Fehemis. Many of them are excellent rope-dancers;
others are musicians, playing chiefly on the talla, a kind of castanet.
They also practise female circumcision upon Muslim girls, bore ears and
nostrils, and tattoo lips and chins.

The Nawar of Egypt were hereditary robbers, like certain tribes in
India. They were protected and even employed by the Billi tribe of
Arabs, and the relations of patron and client were those of the
Highland chiefs and the crofters upon their properties. Muhammad Ali
Pasha succeeded in taming this lawless tribe, which for generations
had given immense trouble to his predecessors, upon the principle
of setting a thief to catch a thief. He employed them as police and
watchmen upon his country estates, and he allowed them 50 per cent. on
property recovered from plunderers brought to justice. Since that time
they have seldom broken the law, except at Cairo, where there is less
chance of detection. They intermarry with the Fellahin, or Egyptians
of the soil, from whom in physique and raiment they can hardly be
distinguished. Outwardly they profess Muhammadanism, and they have
little intercourse with the Helebis and Ghagar. In 1847 their chief was
a certain Shaykh Yusuf, one of the most notorious thieves in Egypt.


§ 2. _The Gzane of Algeria and Morocco._

This race is interesting because it shows the origin of the Darb
el-mendel, the Magic Mirror of Egypt, known to the Hindus as Aujan. It
was first noticed in India by the learned Dr. Herklots, who in 1832
published a most valuable volume on the manners and customs of the
Hindi Muslims. Unfortunately the British public misjudged its title,
and held it to be a cookery-book. The next to notice it was Mr. Lane
(_Modern Egyptians_, Vol. II., chap, xii.) in 1835. He tells us that
two Europeans, an Englishman and a Frenchman, learned to induce the
phenomenon; and he concludes with the normal deprecatory formula of his
age: “Neither I nor others have been able to discover any clue by which
to penetrate the mystery; and if the reader be alike unable to give the
solution, I hope that he will not allow the above account to induce in
his mind any degree of scepticism with respect to other portions of
this work.” Since that time the _Zoist_, the _Journal de Magnétisme_,
and similar publications took up the subject, and traced it from
Cornelius Agrippa and Dr. Dee to the most degraded of existing savages,
the Australians:

The following is Dr. de Pietra Santa’s account of the two modes
of fascination employed by the “magicians” of French Africa
(Algiers)[203]:

“The first forms part of the baggage of all Arab _Gzanes_, Gypsies,
sorceresses, and fortune-tellers. When one wishes to strike the
imagination of the multitude, it is absolutely necessary to find
phenomena which are both intelligible to all and which each one can
instantly verify for himself. Amongst such there is not one more
evident than sleep. It is therefore important for the _Gzane_, in order
to prove in an undeniable manner her moral power and supernatural
influence, that she should be able to send to sleep at a given moment
the person who has recourse to her occult science. She employs the
following means:

“Upon the palm of the hand she describes, with some blackish colouring
matter, a circle, in whose centre is marked a spot equally black. After
looking fixedly at the latter for a few minutes, the eyes grow heavy,
they blink, and the sight is confused; the heaviness is presently
succeeded by sleep, and sleep by a sort of insensibility,[204] of which
the Gypsy profits to exercise her manœuvres more securely. I give you
the simple fact without commentaries; and abjuring any pretensions to
determine its importance.

“Let us now pass on to the second mode of fascination. Upon a table
covered with a white cloth is placed a bottle, usually filled with
water and backed by a small lamp lighted. The subject is comfortably
seated on a chair, and told to look at the bright point placed before
him at the distance of a few steps. After a few minutes the eyelids
grow heavy, then they gradually smile, and sleep is induced. With
nervous temperaments palpitation of the heart and headache also
manifest themselves.

“In order to give an odour of the supernatural to these phenomena, the
Moroccan, Gypsy or Marabout, has a certain quantity of benzoin burnt
behind the table; and while the vapour spreads itself through the
room, the person undergoing the process falls into a complete state of
anæsthesia.”

Borrow mentions in Barbary sundry “sects of wanderers,” which he
shrewdly suspects to be Gypsies, and whom he provides with the worst
of characters. The first are the “Beni Aros” (?), who wander about
Fez, and have their homes in the high mountains near Tetuan. A comely,
well-made race, they are beggars by profession, notorious drunkards,
addicted to robbery, murder, and effeminate crimes. They claim to be
Moors, and their language is Arabic. The second are the “Sidi Hamed au
Muza,” so called from their patron saint. In many respects they not a
little resemble the Gypsies; but they speak the Shilhah, or a dialect
of that tongue. They earn their livelihood by vaulting, tumbling, and
tricks with sword and dagger, to the sound of wild music, which the
women, seated on the ground, produce from their uncouth instruments.


§ 3. _The Gypsies in Inner Africa._

It is generally believed that the Romá have extended far southwards
from Morocco and Barbary. Borrow remarks of the Dar-bushi-fal
(fortune-tellers), that if they are not Gypsies, the latter people
cannot be found in the country. Numerous in Barbary, they wander
during the greater part of the year, pilfering, fortune-telling, and
dealing in mules and donkeys. Their fixed villages are known as “Char
Seharra,” witch hamlets. They can change the colour of an animal, and
transform a white man into a negro black as a coal, after which they
sell him as a slave. They are said to possess a peculiar language,
which, being neither Arabic nor Shilhah, is intelligible only to their
own caste. Borrow often conversed with them; but he neglected to apply
his favourite Shibboleth, Pani (water). Their faces are described as
exceedingly lean, their skins swarthy, and their legs are reeds; “when
they run, the devil himself cannot overtake them.” Their vehicles of
divination are oil, a plate full of flour, or a shoe placed in the
mouth. They are evil people, and powerful enchanters, feared by the
emperor himself.

M. Paul Bataillard (_Notes et Questions_) refers, for information
concerning the Gypsies, to the _Voyage dans le Nord et dans les
Parties Centrales de l’Afrique_, the journey of Denham and Clapperton,
translated by Eyries and another (Paris, 1826, 3 vols. 8vo). These
authors, he says, pretend to assimilate the “Chouâa” Arabs of Bornou
with the Gypsies. Indeed, they expressly declare that their Arabic is
almost pure Gypsy. This is, however, incompatible with another passage,
which declares that these “Chouâas” have imported into Bornou the
Arabic, which they speak purely.

I can only find[205] that the women of the Chouâa Arabs are described
as “a very extraordinary race, with scarcely any resemblance to the
Arabs of the north: they have fine open countenances, with aquiline
noses and large eyes; their complexion is a light copper colour; they
possess great cunning with their courage, and resemble in appearance
some of our best-formed Gypsies in England, particularly the women; and
their Arabic is nearly pure Egyptian.” Major Denman afterwards found
the “Shouaas of the tribe of Waled Salamat, extending eastward quite as
far as the Tchad.” He notes their difference from the Fellalahs, and
their practice of sending plundering parties to Mandara. We also hear
of their skill in the chase and their use of the spear on horseback.

FOOTNOTES:

[167] In Spain this is called “Germania,” which, however, refers not to
the true Gypsy, but to the cant slang, or “Thieves’ Latin”; the French
_argot_ and the Italian _gorgo_, a mere farrago, which contained only a
few words of Romani.

[168] Lane (chap. xx.), generally so correct, falls, according to
Kremer, into an error when he explains Hawi simply by “performer of
sleight of hand tricks” (_Taschenspieler_); the origin of the word,
Hayyeh, “a snake,” shows its signification. Amongst the Sinaitic
Bedawin almost every tribe has an official called the Hawi, who is
supposed to be poison-proof, and to have the power of stanching wounds
and curing hurts by his breath. The necessary qualification for this
office is that the mother should make her babe swallow, before he
has tasted other food, a cake composed of seven barleycorns, seven
grains of wheat, a small scorpion, and a hornet, all pounded and mixed
together (_The Desert of the Exodus_).

[169] Algeria as well as Morocco is full of Gypsies, including the
'Aysawí Dervishes.

[170] Gházi (plural Ghawázi) would mean in Arab “one who fights for
the Faith,” or “a conqueror of infidels.” Europe has learned this
much during the Russo-Turkish war (1877); but our papers ridiculously
misused the term “Ghazi Mukhtar,” for Mukhtar Páshá Gházi is worse
than any amount of “Sir Smith.” According to some authorities, the
Egyptian Gypsies took this title to gratify their Oriental crave for
grandiloquence. But, I would remark, in Persian it is synonymous with
rope-dancer or courtisan; and perhaps both are derived from the Ghagar
“Ghaziyah,” meaning a woman (?).

[171] The origin of the term is a Persian _jeu de mots_. “Bermek'am”
would mean _I am a Barmak_; Bar-maken, _I sup it up_. These were
the words spoken by Ja'afar the “Barmekide” when his poisoned ring
caused the stones upon the arm of the Ommiade Caliph (Abd el Malik) to
rattle--a general and popular superstition. It is quite possible that
this memorable family belonged to the Gypsy tribe so common in Persia.
According to Ibn Khálikán, the first great ancestor was the principal,
or the grand prior, of the convent in Balkh called Nan-buhar (young
spring), a palpable corruption of Nava bihára, in Sanskrit the “new
monastery.”

[172] Hence an Englishman defined the Gypsy religion as “faith in
fortune-telling.”

[173] Captain Newbold (p. 288) tells a curious tale of a Fehemi (wise
woman), who threw a cowrie into a basin of clear water, and muttered
an invocation over it; when the pot began to boil, the shell was shot
out--doubtless by some chemical substance--to the distance of several
feet. Some of the water accompanied it, with a slight explosion like
that of a percussion cap thrown into the fire.

[174] The word should be written Dár-For, the abode or region of the
For tribe.

[175] The latter material is that originally used in the Arab Darb el
Raml (throwing of the sand), briefly called El Raml (the sand), that
is, geomancy.

[176] In conversation Von Kremer quoted the name Sabáijeh, a “broken
plural,” of which no singular is known, as alternating with Zutt in old
Arab historians. Newbold enumerates among the “distinct classes” of
Ghagar the Meddáhín, Gharrádín, Barmekí (Barmekides), Walad Abú Tenná,
Bayt el Rífá'í (?), Hemmeli, and Románi (p. 292).

[177] This was written before 1863; in 1877 the old camping-ground of
the Uzbeg Tatars had become a kind of Parisian quarter.

[178] Kremer gives “Kurudāti”; the word is generally in the diminutive
form Kurayd, a little Kird (baboon).

[179] From the Persian Pahlewán, a brave, a wrestler, an athlete.

[180] Generally written 'Id el Zuhá, the great Meccan festival when the
victims are offered.

[181] Their active habits make them a fine race. Newbold says that
“one of the most magnificent women he had ever seen in the East” was
a Ghagar rope-dancer at the palace of one of the Cairene Beys; he
complains only that she had disfigured herself by tattooing her under
lip and chin--a practice very common among the Arab women of Syria and
Egypt.

[182] At the end of 1763 the _Gazette_ of Vienna printed a letter
from the Hungarian captain, Szekely de Doba. The latter related how
a Protestant pastor, when studying at Leyden, made the acquaintance
of some Malabar youths, who spoke of a province Zingania (of course
Zigeuner), and whose language was that of the Gypsies. He made a
vocabulary of about a thousand words, and returning home to Almasch
or Almas, near Komorn, he found, to his surprise, that the “tinklers”
understood them. The Hindustani grammars published in England (1773)
and in Portugal (1778) enabled Grellman, Richardson, Marsden,
Ludolf, and others to trace the resemblance with a firm hand. See
Mayo and Quindalé, who in p. 45 fall into the vulgar error that the
“Mongol-Hindustani jargon” began to be used in India only after the
Moghol Conquests. These authors declare that when the celebrated
Mezzofanti, of Bologna, became deranged in 1832, he never confused
Gypsy with his other thirty-two tongues. Borrow’s _Translation of St.
Luke_ is also said to have retained several Spanish words from Padre
Scio. As regards the “Germania” _argot_ of Spain, a vocabulary was
published about the middle of the last century by Juan Hidalgo; and
though mostly obsolete, the useless farrago was textually reproduced in
the _Diccionario de la Academia_.

[183] It is usually explained as an abbreviation of Símiyá, a word
formed in imitation of Kímiyá (alchemy).

[184] Curious to say, this word is pure Etruscan, and appears in no
other language known to me.

[185] Newbold adds:

  20, Yuksi or Yeksi; 21, Yirksi wa, etc.

  30, Yuksi wa dés (30 and 10); 31, Yuksi wa des wa, etc.

  40, Kamáki or Kumáki.

  50, Kamáki wa des, etc.

  60, Kamáki wa yuksi.

  70, Kamáki wa yuksi wa des.

  80, Du Kamáki (2 forties).

  90, Du Kamáki wa dés.

  100, Hel. Bank, Sad (Pers.), or Dúi Kamáki wa yuksi (2 forties + 20);
      Naw. Beni.

  1000, Des Bank (10 hundred); das Sad.

[186] I have marked with a star the words which appear original, or
rather unconnected with Arabic. The list is compared with Newbold’s
vocabularies, H. (Helebi), G. (Ghagar), N. (Náwer).

[187] They are not likely to have two words for “father,” so A'rub is
probably dialectic. Newbold gives the Helebi word Gárúbi; Ghagar, Bálo,
Mánsh; Náwer, Báyábí.

[188] The two affixed pronouns--í (my) and ak (thy)--are also pure
Arabic.

[189] This form of feminine (opposed to Maia, masculine), Sem'ah, from
Sem', is also Arabic. Newbold adds:

  Wife: H. Kúdah; G. Gaziyeh; N. Gad.

  Husband: H. El-baráneh; G. Marash; N. Maras. Of these the latter two
      are evidently corrupted from the Sansk. Manushya; Prak. Mánus.

  Boy: H. Lambún, Sumgun; G. Chabo; N. Sowaiti.

  Girl: H. Lambúnih, Samgunih; G. Somah, Chabo, or Chai; N. Bubúr.

[190]

  Day: H. Merrakrish; G. Chebish.

  Rain: H. Matr (Arab.); G. Bursunden (Pers.), Moga; N. Aug.

  The two latter may be Sansk. Megha, a cloud.

  Snow: H. Telj (Arab.); G. Gharábi.

  Cloud: H. Reim (Arab. Ghaym); G. Bárúd.

  Light: H. and G. Núr.

[191]

  Sheep: H. Hahaiya; G. Bakra (Hind.).

  Hare: H. Emeb (Arab.); G. Kundu.

  Cat: H. Ghutta (Arab.); G. Berkuka.

  Mare: H. Schliyeh; G. Aghorai. The first is the Arabic form of
      feminine from Sohli, a stallion; the second is Hind.

  Hog: H. Khangír (Arab.); G. Hallúf (Arab.); N. Segel harmin (?).

  Crow: H. Grab (Arab.); G. Mentuf, Kil.

  Snake: H. Tábun (Arab. Thu'ubán?); G. Samp (Hind.).

  Fish: H. Semek (Arab.); G. Machchiyeh (Hind.).

[192]

  Sea: H. Buhr (Arab.); G. Pani (Sansk.).

  A Spring (fount): H. Ain (Arab.); G. Moga (Mayet, corr. Arab?).

  A Well: H. Bir (Arab.); G. Ghibini.

[193] Milk: H. Millanish, Helwah (Arab. Halwá, the sweet?); G. Rágún,
Rághebi, Chúti; N. Rawán.

[194] In this, as in other cases, the Sa'idi dialect appears to throw
back the accent.

[195]

  Barley: H. Muharish; G. Jan (Sansk. Pers.).

  Dhurra-grain: H. Meghidhurra; G. Darineh.

  Rice: H. Ruz (Arab. Pers.); G. Barnu, Fukiyeh, Udbukh (_i.e._
      tetbukh, cook thou!?).

  Bread: H. Shemun, Mushmul; G. Márey; N. Nan (Pers.).

[196]

  Finger: H. Sabua (Arab.); G. Augushti (Hind.).

  Neck: H. Rekl (Arab.); G. Sheriti.

  Knee: H. Ruggal or Kumayhtu; G. Shang.

  Teeth: H. Sinnan (Arab.), Suvan; G. Dándi (Hind.), Sinnam.

  Flesh: H. Udwan; G. Maas (Hind.).

  Perd, mas.: H. Lib; G. Kiab.

  " neut.: H. Budi; G. Minchiá; N. Bud.

  Belly: H. Batu (Arab.); G. Burri; N. Bosah.

[197] Ring: H. Khatim (Arab.); G. Augústir (Hind.).

[198] The terminal, amrak, may be they work, business, property; in
fact, synonymous with the vulgar bitá'k.

[199] Every Arabic dialect has some euphonistic form of expressing
fire; the simple word Nar would be inauspicious, suggesting the idea of
hell-fire.

[200] Newbold adds:

NOUNS.

  God: H. Allah; G. Allah; N. Allah.

  Devil: H. Shaytan (Arab.); G. Iblis (Arab.); N. Harmir (Harami?).

  Christian: H. Ghiraie; G. Balámu.

  Gentile, _i.e._ non-Gypsy: H. Hushno; G. Chaju; N. Kegháneh.

  Luck (fortune): H. Bakht (Pers.); G. Búji; N. Sohri.

  Poison: H. Sun (Arab. Sum?); G. Zúngali; N. Mubahah (Arab. the
      permitted?).

  Love: all use Hebb (Habb, Arab.).

  Harlot: H. Beskanan; G. Besignan, Gabu; N. Gad el-haram.

  Zone of chastity: H. Hug; G. Dilk; N. Fowi (Fútah, a napkin).

  Name: H. Ism (Arab.); G. Rubon (_i.e._ your name); N. Minas.

  Year: H. Shahr (Arab.); G. Yuk Sadísh.

  King: H. Dazi, Zilk; G. El-reibo, el-burro (Hind. Bará, gnat?).

  City or village: H. Gavuti (Hind.); G. Gáv (Hind.); N. Desi (Hind.).

  Bridge: all Juntava (error or corruption of Kantaral?).

  House: H. Nizb; G. Kír (Ghar, Hind?).

  Door: H. Bál (Arab.); G. Kápú (Turk.).

  Rope: H. Hebl (Arab.); G. Dori (Hind.).

  Paper: all use Warkeh (Arab).

  Book: all use Kitáb (Arab.).

ADJECTIVES.

  Sick, tired: H. Tabau (Arab.).

  Bad: H. Battál (Arab.); G. Bilbey.

  Good: H. Tayyib (Arab.); G. Sasho (pure Gypsy).

  Great: H. Kabir (Arab.); G. Bara (Hind.); N. Bari.

  Small: H. Sughayyar (Arab.); G. Thoranki (Hind.).

  Black: H. Aswadish (corr. Arab.); G. Kálo (Hind.).

  White: all use Alyar (Arab.).

  Cold: H. Melladish (corr. Arab.); G. Memudrih.

  Hot: H. Mahrarish (corr. Arab.); G. Garu (Pers.).

ADVERBS.

  Much: H. Ketír (Arab.); G. Bhút (Hind.).

  A little: H. Meframrush; G. Theráki, Thukrání (corr. Hind.).

  Enough: H. Keffi (Arab.); G. Bas (Pers.), Nunniya.

  Here: H. Hene (Arab.); G. Syde.

  There: H. Hunáh (Arab.); G. Aurileh.

[201] This proves one of two things: first, that the Gypsies left India
before the Hindus had borrowed a Western character from the Phœnicians;
or two, the Gypsies were a low caste, which, like the Pariahs and
others, ignore writing.

[202] When travelling, for instance, they place on prominent rocks and
remarkable trees pebbles, bits of thread, and similar articles, showing
the road they have taken.

[203] Letter written from Algiers, and published in the _Union
Médicale_ of January 2, 1860.

[204] This is evidently the hypnotism so called by Dr. John Braid, of
Manchester, the Braidism of Continental writers. The discovery was
made in 1841. See _Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep,
Considered in Relation with Animal Magnetism_. About 1849, profiting
by the studies of Doctors J. B. Dods and Philips, a certain Mr. Stone
introduced into England a modification of hypnotism, which he absurdly
called _Electro-biology_; his zinc and copper discs were the civilized
succedanea of the ink-blot.

[205] _Narrative of Travels in_ 1822-24. The folio edition shows two
women with the crisp African hair.



CHAPTER VII

THE GYPSY IN EUROPE


§ 1. _The Gypsy in Hungary_

The Czigany, as they are called, appeared early in the fifteenth
century, and were supposed to have fled from Moghol persecution. King
Sigismund, father of the heroic John Hunyadi,[206] allowed them to
settle in his realm, and the law called them “mere peasants.” In 1496
Bishop Sigismund at Funf-Kirchen ordered iron cannon-balls from the
Gypsies to be used against the Turkish invaders of Hungary; and he was
doughtily supported against the Turks by King Zindelo, Dukes Miguel and
Andrew, by Counts Manuel and Juan, by the “noble knight” Pedro, and by
the chief Tomas Polgar.

The reforms of 1848 found them in a state of slavery, _adscripti
glebœ_, who could not legally take service away from their birthplace.
Their condition was worse than that of the Wallach peasant, who says
of his haughty Magyar Magnate, “A lord is a lord born in hell.” Some
forty years ago Mr. Paget[207] says Gypsies were exposed for sale in
the neighbouring province of Wallachia. In the Hungary of the bad old
_régime_ the relation of the landowning peasant, however oppressive
might have been his obligations, was never that of master and slave. If
the agriculturist chose to give up his _session-lands_, the ground he
occupied by hereditary use, he could go where he pleased. Practically
this was rare; it was equivalent to giving up his means of subsistence,
and he preferred the tax-paying while all the nobles went free, and the
odious burden of the “Robot” _corvée_, or forced labour, two and in
some cases three days a week. Hence he hated the military conscription,
the only means of civilizing him established by Austria in 1849.[208]
But the Czigany, however deep-rooted is his love of liberty, never
preserved the modicum of freedom to which the Hungarian clung.

Though now legally free, the Czigany’s deep respect for everything
aristocratic attaches him to the ruling caste. In Transylvania “Magyar”
is a distinctive term for class as well as race. The Czigany who do
not assimilate with the thrifty Saxons prefer to be mere hangers-on at
the castle of the Hungarian Magnate, as in England of old they take
his name; and they profess the same faith--Catholic, Protestant, or
nothing. Notwithstanding their incurable propensity for pilfering,
they are trusted as messengers and carriers; like the old Spanish
_arriero_, they form a general “parcels-delivery company.” And they
are ubiquitous, for never a door is left unlocked lest a Gypsy will
slip in and steal. In old days they were most efficient spies upon
Christian and Muslim, and they trimmed between the twain to their own
advantage. They also made the best of smugglers; they dug for treasure,
and they washed for _paillettes_ of gold the Transylvanian affluents
of the Danube. At times they set out upon plundering excursions,
which extended to Italy, France, and Spain. They are still accused of
incendiarism by the Wallachs, who apparently thus seek to hide the
malpractices resulting from their inordinate lust of revenge, the ugly
survival of the savage character. These people forget that “curses,
like chickens, come home to roost,” and will play with fire even when
it damages themselves.

The settled Gypsy’s dwelling is even more primitive than the Wallachs.
The hut is formed, like the African’s, with plaited sticks, and
swish is plastered into the gaps. Before the hut entrance often
stands the nomad cart, two wheeled and tilted, and always stands the
tripod supporting the iron pot--a sight, like the scarlet cloak, once
familiar to us, but now disappeared from England. In time the earth
is grass-grown; and as the hovel is rarely more than seven feet high,
it looks rather like an exaggerated ant-hill or a tumulus than a
habitation for man. Yet the ragged inmate, whose children go about in
nature’s garb, is clever with his hands. He is the best blacksmith in
the country, and he fashions simple wooden articles for household use
with dexterity and even with taste. Despite his wretched surroundings,
he keeps his good spirits, he sings to his work, and he plays the
violin in his leisure hours.

I need hardly repeat the commonplaces about the music of the Hungarian
Gypsy, and the legends concerning Catalani and Liszt. Strolling bands,
in civilized attire, and performing upon divers instruments, are and
have been for some time well known to the capitals of Europe. So great
is the contrast between their art and their surroundings, that more
than one traveller has suspected this marvellous gift of pathetic
strains to be a “language brought with them in their exile from another
and a higher state of existence.” I find in it only the marriage of
Eastern with Western melody, the high science of the former, so little
appreciated by the ignorant Anglo-Indian, with the perfect practice of
the latter.

Though utterly unalphabetic, these people have a strange power of
stirring their hearers’ hearts. They play by ear, in style unsurpassed
by the best training, the violin, the ’cello, and the zither, with
which London is now familiarized. The airs, often their own, tell a
thrilling national tale in a way that makes an indelible impression
upon the stranger. Now it is the expression of turmoil, battle, and
defeat, followed by a long wail of woe, of passionate grief, mostly in
the minor key. Then it suddenly passes to the major in a wild burst of
joy, of triumph, of exultation, of rapture, which carries along with it
the hearer in irresistible sympathy. It has all the charm of contrast;
of extremes, excitement and depression; subjection and deliverance,
delight and despair. The strains rob the excitable Hungarian of his
reason; he drinks in the music till he is drunk.

The Gypsy is capable of a noble self-sacrifice, and Mr. Crosse tells
a tale which proves it. He passed in a wild, romantic glen a steep,
overhanging rock known throughout the land as the “Gypsy’s stone.”
About the middle of the last century, it is supposed, there was a
famine; and the Czigany, poorer than their neighbours, were reduced to
beg or starve. When turned away by certain hard-hearted villagers, one
poor fellow refused to go, declaring that his children were dying of
hunger. “Then,” said one of the boors in a mocking tone, “I will give
your family a side of bacon, if you will jump from that rock.” “You
hear his promise!” cried the Czigan, appealing to the crowd. Without
another word he rushed from amongst them, clambered up the rock, and
took the leap, which was--death.

This is exactly what we might expect under the circumstances from a
Hindu. The system of _Badli_--in plain English, paying a man to “take
blame” and to be hanged for you--is the best proof.

It should be remembered that a Hungarian was the first to publish the
“Indic origin” of the Romani tongue. At the end of 1765 an interesting
_communiqué_ was addressed to the _Vienna Gazette_ by Captain Szekely
de Doba. He related that the Protestant parson Stephen Vali while
studying at Leyden made acquaintance with certain Malabar youths sent
there by the Dutch Government, and their vernacular reminded him of
the Gypsy tongue which he had heard in his home at Almasch. They also
assured him that in Malabar there is a district called _Zigania_ (?),
which suggested a comparison with the German Zigeuner. At their
dictation he wrote down almost a thousand words, and returning to
Almasch he was surprised to find the Czigan understanding them.

Then set in the first period (1775-1800) of Sanskrit and Zend study,
accompanied by publications of Bengali, Urdu, and others of the
eighteen Prakrit tongues still spoken in the great Peninsula. This led
to careful study of Romani. The celebrated Mezzofanti did not hesitate
to assign it high rank amongst the thirty-two languages he had studied;
and when he lost his mind (1832) he never confounded it with other
idioms. Then followed in 1837 the _Gospel of St. Luke_ translated into
Spanish _Caló_ by “Gypsy Borrow,” who, however, inserted Castilian
words from Father Scio instead of forming them from Gypsy roots.


§ 2. _The Gypsies of Spain._

We have ample material for studying the Spanish Gypsy, or Flamanco,
as he is contemptuously called, probably because he entered Andalusia
in the train of the Flemings during the first third of the fifteenth
century. Yet it is somewhat remarkable that Europe believed up to the
end of that century the purely Spanish origin of the Gypsies.

Pasquier, describing the arrival of these “penitents” in Paris A.D.
1427, adds that from that time all France was infested by these
vagabonds, but that the first horde was replaced by the Biscayan and
other peoples of the same origin. This suggests an early occupation
of the Peninsula; although Francisca de Cordova in his _Didasculia_
declared they were first known in Germany, and the general belief now
is that the last horde entered Europe by the highroads of Andalusia and
Bulgaria, or rather Greece, and they must have been settled for many
years in these countries.

Northern Spaniards find in Andalusian blood a distinct Gypsy
innervation.

In Spain, as elsewhere, the Gypsy made himself hated by his systematic
contempt of the laws of _meum_ and _teum_; whilst he was protected
by two widely different conditions: the first was his poverty (“As
poor as a Gypsy” is still a proverb); secondly, he was a spy equally
useful to Christian and unbeliever. Yet action was not wanting. In
1499 was published the Gran Pragmatica (Royal Ordinance) of Medina
del Campo, under the influence of a fanatic archbishop, banishing on
and after the term of sixty days the Egyptian and foreign tinkers
(_caldereros_), and forbidding return under pain of mutilation. This
Pragmatica was renewed under Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo and of
Madrid, with the additional punishment of perpetual slavery for those
found wandering a third time. Yet in 1560, on his marriage at Toledo
with Isabelle of France, Gypsy dances formed part of the festivities.
He was comparatively mild, and after moderating the old rigorous
laws he ordered the outcasts to live in towns. In 1586 the same king
allowed them to sell their goods at ten fairs and markets under certain
conditions.

These nomads picked up information from all classes, and the women,
with their black magic, sorcery, and devilry, palmistry, love-potions,
and poisons, penetrated into every secret. The Holy Office, established
in January, 1481, disdained to persecute such paupers; and the strong
arm of the law could not do more than hang a few witches. Ticknor
remarks: “Encouraged by the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, also by that
of the Moors in 1609-11, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, a professor in the
University of Toledo, addressed Philip III. in a discourse published in
1619, urging that monarch to drive out the Gypsies, but he failed.”

Another authority says that he himself, 1618, had prepared a memorial
to that effect, adding, “It is very vicious to tolerate such a
pernicious and perverse race.” Cordova, writing in 1615, accused them
of preparing, some years before, an organized attack upon Sogrovo
town when the pest raged, and declares that it was saved from such by
the arts of a certain wizard who had mysterious relations with the
vagabonds.

The charges of cannibalism became universal, founded probably upon the
fact that Gypsies do not disdain the flesh of animals poisoned by them.

That many of the persecuted outcasts were compelled to fly the country
we shall see presently in the Morerias of Brazil; and when religious
zeal cooled down, political interests took its place, and led to the
great legal persecution. Philip IV. in 1633 prohibited the Gypsy
dress and dialect, expelled them from the Ghettos, and by rendering
intermarriage illegal aimed at fusing the vagrants with other subjects.
In 1692 Charles II. ordered them to practise nothing but agriculture.
The decree was renewed in 1695, and article 16 threatened punishment to
all, gentle and simple, who aided and abetted them. Philip V. in 1726
banished from Madrid certain Gypsy women who had petitioned in favour
of their persecuted husbands. Nineteen years afterwards (1745) he
ordered the fugitives to return to his dominions under pain of fire and
steel, denying to them even the right of asylum in sacred places. This
terrible decree was renewed in 1746-49.

Better days now began to dawn. The racial hatred and brutality suffered
by the Gypsies became by slow degrees to be considered the abrogations
of past ages. Already, in 1783, Don Carlos of Spain followed the
Emperor Joseph of Germany, 1782, and revoked the ultra-Draconian laws
which aimed at the extinction of a people, and substituted decrees
contrasting strongly with the Pragmatica of 1499; he even threatened
pains and penalties to those who hindered the Gypsies in their
occupations. In fact, the Gitano, no longer the Egipciano, was allowed
intermarriage with his caste, his family rights were recognized, and he
was allowed to choose his own trade. He was forbidden only to wear any
special dress, to display his language in public, or to exercise the
ignoble parts of his calling. Briefly, after having been for centuries
of persecution a social pariah, he became a subject. The change must
be attributed only to the French philosophical school, and the works
of the encyclopedists, which presently led to the greatest benefits
of modern ages, the first French Revolution of 1789. It made men and
citizens where it found serfs and slaves.

These humanitarian measures bore their natural consequences. Under the
effect of toleration the Gypsies lost much of the savage wildness which
distinguished them in the depths of the Toledo Mountains, the Sierra
Morena, and the wild Alpujarras. They flocked to the valleys of the
Ebro, the Tagus, and the Guadiana, where many, waxing rich and caring
little for a community of goods, lost much of their devotion to caste
and their fear and horror of their Christian fellow-citizens. And the
grey-beards did not fail to complain that the Zincálo was speedily
becoming a Gacho or a Busno, opprobrious terms applied to non-Gypsies.

The Gitanos of Spain are supposed to number from fifty to sixty
thousand, and the increased toleration of society is rapidly
concentrating them into the great towns. They abound in Madrid, Cadiz,
Malaga, Granada, Cordova, Ciudad Real, Murcia, Valencia, Barcelona,
Pamplona, Valladolid, and Badajoz. In parts of Upper Aragon and the
Alpujarras Mountains they are troglodytes rather than nomad hordes.
Even in the northern provinces, Old Castile, Asturias, and Galicia,
where they formerly were most hated and feared, they are now freely
allowed to settle. A complete assimilation is expected from the
position which they have acquired in places like Cadiz and Malaga. They
are beginning to educate themselves in a country where hardly 20 per
cent. can read, and where a grandee of the last generation was a kind
of high-caste _chalan_ (horse-cooper) or _torero_ (bull-fighter)--the
Gitano’s peculiar trades. Though they preserve the Gypsy tradition,
some of them traffic largely in cattle and own extensive butcheries;
they keep inns and taverns; they deal with the chief merchants; and
they live in luxury. Gitanos of the poorer classes buy and barter
animals; act jockeys and race-riders; people the bull-ring (especially
in Andalusia); work nails and ironmongery, as at Granada and Cordova;
and plait the coloured baskets for which Murcia, Valencia, and
Barcelona are famous. Their women sell poultry and old rags; prepare
buns (_buñuelos_) and black puddings (_morcillas de sangre_); engage
themselves as tavern cooks; are excellent smugglers; and find in
interpreting dreams, in philter-selling, and in fortune-telling the
most lucrative industries. They sing and play various instruments,
accompanying the music with the most voluptuous and licentious
dances and attitudes; but woe to the man who would obtain from these
Bayaderes any boon beyond their provocative exhibition. From the Indus
to Gibraltar the contrast of obscenity in language and in songs with
corporal chastity--a lacha ye drupo, “body shame,” as they term it--has
ever been a distinctive characteristic. No brothel in Europe can boast
of containing a Gypsy woman.[209] The mother carefully watches and
teaches her child to preserve the premices for the Rom, the Gypsy
husband. At marriages they preserve the old Jewish and Muslim rite,
that disappeared from Spain only with the accession of the house of
Austria. Even Isabella of Castile, when she was married at Valladolid
to Ferdinand of Aragon, allowed her “justificative proofs” to be
displayed before the wedding-guest. Gypsy marriages, like those of the
high-caste Hindus, entail ruinous expense; the revelry lasts three
days; the “Gentile” is freely invited; and the profusion of meats and
drinks often makes the bridegroom a debtor for life. I have explained
this practice in Hindustan as the desire to prove that the first
marriage is _the_ marriage.

The Spanish Gypsies are remarkable for beauty in early youth: for
magnificent eyes and hair, regular features, light and well-knit
figures, easy gait, and graceful bearing. Their locks, like the Hindus,
are lamp-black, and without a sign of wave; and they preserve the
characteristic eye. The form is perfect, and it has an especial look to
which is attributed the power of engendering _grandes passions_--one
of the privileges of the eye. I have often remarked its fixity and
brilliance, which flashes like phosphoric light, the gleam which in
some eyes denotes madness. I have also noted the “far-off look” which
seems to gaze at something beyond you, and the alternation from the
fixed stare to a glazing or filming over of the pupil.[210] Hence the
English song:

    A Gypsy stripling’s glossy (?) eye
      Has pierced my bosom’s core,
    A feat no eye beneath the sky
      Could e’er effect before.

And in Spain it is remarked that the Gypsy man often makes a conquest
of the Busno’s wife.

The women are more voluble in language and licentious in manners
than the men. These characteristics, combined with the most absolute
repulsion for other favours, even to the knife, explain how many sons
of grandees and great officials took part in the nightly orgies and
by day favoured the proscribed caste. Moreover, the Gitana protected
herself by the possession of family secrets. Besides soothsaying
and philter-selling, she had a store of the _Raiz del buen Baron_
(the goodman’s, _i.e._ the devil’s, root), alias Satan’s herb, which
relieved incommodious burdens. At fairs, while the husbands were
chapping and chaffering, the good-wives made money by the process
called _coger á la mano_ (to catch in hand); that is, pilfering coins
by sleight during the process of exchanging. Amongst other malpractices
is one called in Romani _Youjano báro_ (the great trick), translated
_gran socaliña_ (great trick) by Jermimo de Alcalá in his novel the
_Historia de Alonzo, mozo de muchos amos_ (a youth with many uncles),
written in the early seventeenth century. Rich and covetous widows were
persuaded to deposit jewels and money in dark and unfrequented places,
with the idea of finding buried treasure. Useless to say that the Gypsy
woman was the only gainer by the transaction.

We read that the old Gypsy dress was repeatedly forbidden by law; but
Spanish tradition preserves no memory of what the dress was. I have
little doubt that the immigrants of the fifteenth century had retained
to some extent the Hindu costume, the Pagrí (head-cloth) and the Dhoti
(waist-cloth). So in Moscow I have seen the Gypsy dancing-girls assume
the true toilette of the Hindustani Nachni, the Choli, or bodice, and
the Peshwáz, or petticoat of many folds. Some writers imagine that the
“picturesque vagabonds,” Calós, had borrowed their peculiar garb from
the Moors.

In these days the well-to-do Spanish Rom affects the Andalusian
costume, more or less rich. He delights in white linen, especially
the “biled shirt,” often frilled and embroidered. The materials are
linen and cotton, silk, plush, velvet, and broadcloth. The favourite
tints are blue, red, and marking colours. The short jacket or pelisse
(_zamarra_) is embroidered and adorned with frogs (_alamares_) or large
silver buttons; the waistcoat is mostly red, and a sash of crimson
silk with fringed ends supports the waist; the overalls narrow at
the ankle, where they meet boots or buskins (_borcegúies_), slippers
or sandals (_alpargatas_). Finally, the long lank locks, which hang
somewhat like the Polish Jew’s along the cheeks, are crowned with the
Gypsy _sombrero_ or porkpie, and sometimes with the red Catalan _gorro_
(bonnet), not unlike the glengarry.

The Romi also has retained the dress worn till lately in Andalusia,
and now gradually becoming obsolete. The gleaming hair is gathered in
a Diana knot at the neck, and lit up with flowers of the gaudiest hue;
it lies in bands upon the temples, and the whole is often covered with
an embroidered kerchief. A cloak of larger or lesser dimensions thrown
over the shoulders hardly conceals the bodice and the short, skimpy
petticoat (_saya_), which is embroidered, adorned with bunches of
ribbons, trimmings, and other cheap finery.

The Spanish Gypsies have not preserved, like the Hungarian, their
old habit of long expeditions for begging and plundering purposes.
Consequently they have lost the practice of the _Pateran_ or _Trail_,
the road-marks by which they denote direction. These are fur twigs, or
similar heaps of newly gathered grass disposed at short distances. At
cross-roads the signs are placed on the right side of that followed.
Sometimes they trace upon the ground a cross whose longer arm shows
the way, or they nail one stake to another. The Norwegian Gypsies
trace with their whips a mark on the snow called Faano; it resembles
a sack with a shut mouth. In the course of ages they have lost that
marvellous power of following the _spoor_ which their kinsmen on the
Indus preserve to perfection. They retain a peculiarly shrill whistle,
for which the Guanches were famous. By the signs and the whistles two
parties could communicate with each other; and if anything particular
occurred, messengers were sent to report it.

The Gypsy language was looked upon as a mere conventional jargon, and
its Indian origin, as has been shown elsewhere, was not recognized
before the middle of last century. It was, moreover, confounded with
the Germania (Thieves’ Latin), whose vocabulary, collected by Juan
Hidalgo of Saragona, has found its way into the _Diccionario de la
Academia_. The only Gypsy words it contains are those borrowed from
the Caló by the bullies and ruffians of the days of Quevedo. Many
corruptions and barbarisms, however, have been introduced into books
by pseudo-literati of “white blood,” who prided themselves upon their
knowledge of Romani. For instance, Meriden means Coral; and as in
Spanish reduplication of the consonant changes the word, an inventor,
in order to express Corral (Curral, Kraal, cattle-yard), produced the
most barbarous term Merridden. This was the work of _aficionados_
(fanciers) like the Augustine friar Manso de Sevilla in the Cartuja
or Carthusian convent of Jirez, whose famous breed of horses brought
them into direct communication with the Gypsies. Happily, however,
the language was spoken, not written; and thus, as Mr. Buckle held of
legend and tradition, its purity was preserved.

Gypsy verse is generally improvised to the twanging and tapping of the
guitar, sometimes to the guitar and castanet, and oftentimes without
music. Much that has been printed appears to be of that spurious kind
unintelligible to the Gypsies themselves. The favourite form is in
quartettes, more or less carefully rhymed; they are impressed upon the
hearers’ memory; and thus they pass from mouth to mouth throughout
Spain. Borrow gives a few translations of Gypsy songs in Romani. The
Cantes Flamancos of Demófico, in phonetic Andalusian, chanted at the
fairs and markets, in the cafés and ventas, the streets and alleys of
Seville, date from the last century. The poetry is weak, the moral is
not always irreproachable; but the sentiment is strong and touching.
These Cantes are sung by many a tailor and many a barber who have not
a drop of Gypsy blood in their veins. They can hardly be accepted as
genuine Gypsy work.

FOOTNOTES:

[206] Hence probably the Hungarian Hunyadis are popularly supposed to
have Gypsy blood. John’s mother (A.D. 1400) is said to have been a
fair Wallach, Elizabeth Marsinai, possibly of Romani blood. The legend
of the boy recovering his unknown father’s ring from a plundering
jackdaw, his appearance at Buda, and his receiving the gift of Hunyad
town and sixty villages, is well known. The Turk’s bell was first heard
in invaded Hungary during the reign of Sigismund. John Hunyadi drove
them from Servia and Bosnia, and vainly proposed a league of Christian
powers. When Corvinus passed away after a reign of forty-two years, the
lieges said of him, and still say, “King Matthias is dead, and Justice
died with him.”

[207] _Hungary and Transylvania_, 1839. Before 1848 the Church, the
State, and the nobles were the only landowners; the peasant, however,
had leave to occupy certain tracts (_session-lands_) under his lord.

[208] Mr. Andrew F. Crosse, _Round about the Carpathians_ (Blackwoods,
1878), declares (p. 146) that this “conscription was enforced with
every species of official brutality.” Austria was dealing with a
conquered and a peculiar, stiff-necked people. Lord Palmerston’s hatred
of Austria was, we are told, the best passport to Hungarian sympathy.

[209] The brothels of Buda-Pesth and other large cities of
Austro-Hungary have often one Gypsy woman among their inmates.

[210] I find my opinion confirmed by an older observer: “The
peculiarity of the Gypsy eye consists chiefly in a strange, staring
expression, which, to be understood, must be seen, and in a thin glaze
which steals over it when in repose, and seems to emit phosphoric
light” (_The Gypsies_, by Samuel Roberts).



CHAPTER VIII

THE GYPSY IN AMERICA


_The Gypsies of the Brazil_

The Romá of the North American Republic are well known, and their
emigration is of modern date. During the wars between England and
France which followed the great Revolution many of them exchanged a
wandering life for the service of the country, having been either
kidnapped or impressed, or having taken the shilling. Of course, after
obtaining a passage to the American colonies, they deserted the army,
found friends, and settled in the country. The half-bandit bands of
Scottish Gypsies were mostly broken up in this way.

On the other hand, South America is very little known; and yet the
part with which I am most familiar, the Brazil, is full of Gypsies.
When Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (A.D. 1492) issued the
exterminating edict against Moors, Jews, and Gitanos, the latter slunk
into hiding-places; they were again proscribed by Charles V. (A.D.
1582); and Philip III. (A.D. 1619) issued from Belem in Portugal an
order for all the Gypsies to quit the country within six months--an
order renewed by Philip IV. in A.D. 1633. There was some reason for
this severity. The “masterful beggars” had made themselves infamous
by turning spies to the Turks and Saracens; and if the general
prejudice against them was unfounded, it rested at least upon a solid
foundation--their hatred of the Christian Busno, Gacho, or non-Gypsy.
Thus every maritime city of the Brazil to which the exiles were shipped
presently contained a Gypsy _bairro_, or quarter, the Portuguese
Moreria (Moorery) corresponding with the Spanish Gitaneria, and not a
little resembling the Ghettos of the Italian Jews. For instance, the
Rocco, now the handsomest square in superb Rio de Janeiro, was of old
the Campo dos Ciganos--the Gypsies’ Field. The “Egyptian pilgrims”
thence spread abroad over the Interior, where their tents often attract
the traveller’s eye; and some of them became distinguished criminals,
like the Gypsy Beijú, one of the chief Thugs, whose career, ended by
hanging for the murders which long disgraced the Mantiqueira Mountains,
I have described in the _Highlands of the Brazil_ (i. 63).

Wandering about the provinces of S. Paulo and Minas Geraes, I often met
Gypsy groups whose appearance, language, and occupations were those
of Europe. They are here perhaps a little more violent and dangerous,
and the wayfarer looks to his revolver as he nears their camp at the
dusk hour; yet they are hardly worse than the “Morpheticos” (lepers),
who are allowed to haunt the country. Popular books and reviews ignore
them; but the peasantry regard them with disgust and religious dread.
They protest themselves to be pious Catholics, yet they are so far the
best of Protestants, as they protest, practically and energetically,
against the whole concern. Their religion, in fact, is embodied in the
axiom: “Cras moriemur--post mortem nulla voluptas.” We may well believe
the common rumour which charges them with being robbers of poultry and
horses, and with doing at times a trifle in the way of assassination.

On May 3, 1866, when riding from Rio Claro to Piracicava Saõ Paulo,
I visited a gang of these “verminous ones”; and attended by my armed
servants, I spent a night in their tents. The scene was familiar: the
tilt-tent swarmed with dark children, the pot hung from the triangle,
and horses and ponies for carriage, and perhaps for sale, were picketed
about. The features and complexion were those of the foreign tinkler;
the women, besides trumpery ornaments of brass, coral, and beads, wore
scarlet leg-wraps; and some of the girls were pretty and well dressed
as the memorable Selina, of Bagley Wood, Oxford. Apparently they were
owners of negro slaves, possibly runaways. According to the Brazilians,
they are fond of _nomes esquisitos_ (fancy names); Esmeralda and
Sapphira are common, and they borrow from trees, plants, and animals.

Their chief occupations are petty trade and fortune-telling, when they
reveal for a consideration all the mysteries of “love and law, health
and wealth, losses and crosses.” They also “keen” at funerals during
the livelong day, and drink, sing, and dance through the night--a
regular wake. I could not induce them to use their own tongue, yet they
evidently understood me. This desire to conceal their Gypsy origin I
have frequently noticed elsewhere. It is probably a relic of the days
of their persecution. Fortunately in most civilized countries to-day
the Gypsy can count equal rights with other men.



III.  EL ISLAM



EL ISLAM

OR

THE RANK OF MUHAMMADANISM AMONG THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD


A great philosopher in days of yore informs us that we may search the
world throughout, and that in no region where man has lived can we find
a city without the knowledge of a god or the practice of a religion
(Plutarch).

This apophthegm embodies a dogma somewhat too rash and sweeping. The
necessity of a Demiurgos--a Creator--so familiar to our minds is
generally strange to savages. The wilder tribes of Singhalese Veddahs,
for instance, have no superstition; these savages have not even
attained the fear of demons. It has but scant hold upon the imagination
of barbarous men. The Buddhists and Jains ascribed after Sakya-Muni the
phenomena of the universe to Swabháva, or force inherent in matter,
Matra, and independent of an Ishwara-Karta, or Manufacturing God.
Aristotle and Spinoza believed with Pythagoras the world to be eternal,
and that a God cannot exist without the world, as height without
breadth. Hence Hegel’s “eternal nihilum”--creation being everything
for created beings--in direct opposition to Calvin, who opined that
creation is not a transfusion of essence, but a commencement of it out
of nothing. In the present day, the Kafirs of the Cape, the ancient
Egyptians, and African races generally, barbarians and semi-barbarians,
by no means deficient in intellect and acuteness, have never been able
to comprehend the existence or the necessity of a One God. With them,
as with a multitude of civilized philosophers--the Indian Charvakas,
for instance--Nature is self-existent, Matter is beginningless and
endless; in fact, the world is their God. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_ is the
first article of their creed. Absolute ignorance of any God, then, was
the earliest spiritual condition of the human family.

But veneration is inherent in the human breast. Presently mankind,
emerging from intellectual infancy, began to detect absurdity in
creation without a Creator, in effects without causes. As yet,
however, they did not dare to throw upon a Single Being the whole
onus of the world of matter, creation, preservation, and destruction.
Man, instinctively impressed by a sense of his own unworthiness,
would hopelessly have attempted to conceive the idea of a purely
Spiritual Being, omnipotent and omnipresent. Awestruck by the
admirable phenomena and the stupendous powers of Nature, filled with a
sentiment of individual weakness, he abandoned himself to a flood of
superstitious fears, and prostrated himself before natural objects,
inanimate as well as animate. Thus comforted by the sun and fire,
benefited by wind and rain, improved by hero and sage, destroyed
by wild beasts, dispersed by convulsions of Nature, he fell into a
rude, degrading, and cowardly Fetissism, the faith of fear, and the
transition state from utter savagery to barbarism.

In support of this opinion it may be observed that this religion--if
indeed Fetissism merit that sacred name--in its earliest form contains
no traces of a Godhead or a Creator.[211] It is a systematic worship
of the personified elements, productions, and powers of Nature, male
and female, and supported by a host of associates and subordinates.
Its triad is Indra, the Æther-god; Varuna ([Greek: ουρανος: ouranos]),
the Sun-god; and Agni, the Fire-god. The polytheistic triad of the
Puranas being then unknown, the Creator, Brahma, appears in the Vedas;
the Preserver, Vishnu, inferior to Indra, represents the firmament;
and Siwa is proved by Lassen to have been a local god, subsequently
admitted by the Brahmans into their vast Pantheon. Still further from
man’s belief in those early days is the bold and original thought
of the Upanashids and Vedantas, destined so soon to fall before the
formulæ of the schools and law-books, the Puranas and other traditions.
There Brahm, or the One Almighty, is made the pinnacle of the gorgeous
pagoda of belief; the whole universe, matter and spirit, is represented
to be the very substance and development of the Demiurgos. In support
of their grand Pantheism the Brahma-Sutra declares the human soul to
be a portion of the Deity--_divinæ particula auræ_--“the relation not
being that of master and servant, but that of the whole and part.”
Creation was assumed to be the extension of the Creator’s essence,
as the mathematical point produces by its increase length, depth,
and breadth by endowing empty space with the properties of figure.
From this refined and metaphysical dogma, this theoretical emanation
of being from, and its corollary, refusion into, the Soul of the
World, springs the doctrine of Metempsychosis, “implying belief in
an after-state of rewards and punishments and a moral government of
creation.” The votary of Hinduism has now progressed so far as to
symbolize the vulgar idolatry of the people. Beneficent animals are
explained as symbols of Brahma’s creative and Vishnu’s preserving
functions; wild and ferocious beasts are typified as the Deity’s
destroying power. They revere men of splendid abilities and glorious
actions as having more of the divine essence and a directer emanation
than the vulgar herd. Hence the senseless idol worship of the
unlearned. Select forms also, as the cleft of a tree, are chosen to
represent materially--_oculis subjecta fidelibus_--the passive power of
generation, an upright rock expressing the active.

Thus semi-civilized man explains away the follies of his childhood,
and excuses himself for leaving the ignorant in the outer glooms of a
symbolical faith. But does knowledge precede ignorance--the explanation
the fable? Or is it reasonable to suppose that a symbol, a type, a
myth, was ever worshipped, or that men were ever ashamed of their
gods? The Hindu, and indeed many a Christian, still adores the bull
and cow, the rock, the river, the idol, the relic, and the actual
image; they do not kneel before its metaphysics. The learned explain
them into mere deifications. They are, however, still deities to the
layman and the esoteric; and any attempt to allegorize them would be
held, as in ancient Greece, like the reform of Epicurus, mere Atheism.
We must, however, justly to appreciate these ancient dogmas, rebecome
the primitive children of earth--man in his infancy.[212] The wisdom
of Egypt, the learning of the East are now puerility. But “who knows
what luminous proofs were propagated under the disguise of their old
idolatry? Who cannot see that imagination, first active faculty of
the mind, was fostered by myth, the moral sense by fable, and the
first vacillating steps of knowledge were encouraged by precepts now
seemingly childish and absurd?” (Dabistan). Confucius was as disposed
to primarize secondary causes as his predecessors. Owning that he knew
nothing about the gods, he therefore preferred to avoid the subject.

The ancient Persians, according to Herodotus, who conversed with them,
ignored Dualism, their later scheme. Rejecting the images of gods and
angels, they worshipped without personification or allegory æthereal
fire drawn from the Sun. The universe was their temple, their altars
Pyrætheia, or circles of stones, in the centre of which stood the
kiblah of their simple ignicolism. The very Puritans of heathenry,
they hated the grandiose fanes of the Egyptians, they plundered their
magnificent tombs, slew their bestial deities, and devoured their
garden gods. Presently symbolism began to intrude upon the simple and
primitive faith of Iran. Light and fire, according to Strabo, were
worshipped as the fittest emblems of spirit and subtile intelligence.
Zoroaster was made to believe in a God, “the Best, Incorruptible,
Eternal, Unmade, Indivisible, and most Unlike everything”; in fact,
an abstraction, a negative. Yet Hyde, Anquetil du Perron, and other
moderns make the Parsee sect to represent with their complicated system
of rites and ceremonies, their legion of supernatural beings, powers,
and influences, and abstruse Dualism, the pure ignicolism of the old
Guebre.

But the dark epoch of savage Atheism having fulfilled its time, already
in the Fetissism, the Polytheism, the Pantheism, the Metempsychosis
dogma, and the Idolatry of the early East may be descried the
dawning of an enlightened Theism. Like the dogma of a future state
of rewards and punishments in Moses’ day, it was not unknown though
unexplored. The Hindus had their Vedas Shashwata, and the Guebres
their Akarana Zarwána. The former ruled the triads; the latter was
superior to Hormuzd, the Sun, and Ahriman Ahura-mana, the Evil
Principle personified. So the Greeks had a [Greek: Θεος: Theos], and
the Romans a Deus, ignored except as a theory. The Arabs and the
Mexicans in their vast Polytheism still distinguished Al, the Supreme
Being, from the crowd of subaltern gods, angels and devils, mediators,
subordinate intelligences, incarnations, transmigrations, emanations,
manifestations, and similar earthly representatives. Here, then, was
the thought-germ of an eternal, unmade, incorruptible, and creative
Deity. Enveloped in the mists and shades of priestly fraud and popular
ignorance, still the dogma did exist; and so comforting has been its
light to the soul of man, that no earthly power has ever availed to
extinguish it.

The Vedas Shashwata has been interpreted by philologists to signify
the Sun. Akarana Zarwána (boundless time) is clearly synonymous with
venerable Chronos. So the Mulungu of East Africa and the Uhlungu of the
Kafirs mean equally a spirit, the sun, or the firmament. Amongst the
Masai race, near Kilimanjaro, Engai, the Creator, is feminine, God and
rain being confounded.

The similarity of belief, of manners and customs, and even of the
coincidence of lawful and unlawful food, between India and Egypt is
too striking to be accounted for by mere chance. The Fetissism of the
one exactly resembled that of the other. Both worshipped personified
Nature, or Manushya-Ohakta; they exalted into godhead and adored the
objects of gratitude and reverence, of hope and fear. The “great holy
family” of India became, on the banks of the Nile, Osiris, Isis, and
Horus. Osiris, afterwards typified as the “incarnate Goodness of the
Supreme,” perished to overcome Evil, was raised to life once more, and
became the Judge of the quick and the dead. Isis again is the giver of
Death, and Horus, or Hor, the entrance or re-entrance into Life. Every
male deity in both systems had his Sakti, or passive energy, symbolized
by a woman. Both mythologies had sacred cattle. Eggs, onions, and
beans--favourite articles of diet among the present Muslims--were
forbidden to both for mystical reasons. The lotus flower, an aboriginal
of India, and connected with the superstitions of either country,
has perished out of Egypt with the Muslims, who have no object in
preserving the exotic. In Indian mythology was the Trisiras, in Egypt
the Tevnon, in Greece and Rome the Cerberus, that three-headed dog in
Hades, whose existence must have been communicated from one people to
another. India worships the Sacred Serpent, the modern Muslim of Egypt
adores that of Jebel Shaykh Haridi. Hindu Yogis and Saunyasis still
wander to the banks of the Nile, and prostrate themselves before its
ruined fanes. Society in India was divided into four great separate
bodies--priests, soldiers, tradesmen, and serviles. The Egyptians
numbered a sacerdotal order, a military caste, husbandmen, tradesmen
and artificers, and, lastly, the shepherds, their abomination. Diodorus
Siculus enumerates five castes. The fifth, however, or shepherds,
probably did not belong to society; they were outcasts, corresponding
with the Hindu mixed bloods. In ancient Persia the rigid castes were
also four in number. And as the Aryas or Hindus of Aryavarrta, the
Land of Men, are aborigines of Ariana and cognates of the Arian race,
perhaps this system of artificial and unnatural distinctions arose
in the regions of Mid-Asia. Indeed, Sir W. Jones came to a broader
conclusion; namely, that the three primitive races of mankind must
originally have migrated from a vast central region of earth, and that
that region was Iran.

As time wore on, Pantheism, which sees a deity everywhere, even within
ourselves, regarded the terrestrial gods as earthly vessels animated
with a spark of the Universal Soul. The subaltern deities, the objects
of Sabæan worship, as the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars, were held
to be superior mediating powers with the Almighty Power. A thousand
interpretations, physical, symbolical, mystical, and astronomical, were
framed by the wise of Memphis. And as amongst the Hindus, so the Deity
of Egypt was, though revealed to the initiated, sedulously obscured to
the vulgar by a host of Avatars and incarnations, of transmigrations
and subordinate intelligences.

History is silent upon that most interesting subject, the early
connexion of India and Egypt. There are, however, still traces of its
existence through Arabia, although Wilford greatly exaggerated the
subject. Throughout Oman and Eastern Arabia there are traces to the
present day of castish prejudice. No Kabílí, or man of noble tribe,
however poor, will become a Haddâd (blacksmith), a Shámmár (shoemaker,
in Hindustani Chamár), a Dabbagh (tanner), and a Nayyál (dyer). The
Hindus of Maskat have an Avatar. Every Pandit knows that Shiva and
his wife, under the names of Kapot-Eshwara and Kapot-Eshwari, visited
Mecca, and were there worshipped under the form of male and female
pigeons. This notes a direct communication along the coast of the
Shepherd Kings. Again, it is possible that in ages now forgotten the
Æthiopians may have received from the Hindus their arts, sciences, and
civilization, which would naturally float northwards with the Nile.

From Egypt these dogmas passed over to Greece, from Greece to the
Rasenian people of ancient Etruria. This diffusion, proved by the
similarity of their belief, is supported by old tradition. Herodotus
explains the fable of the black pigeon that fled to Dodona, and there
established the oracle on the ground that it was founded by a female
captive from the Thebaïd. The manifest resemblance of the rites
and ceremonies, the processions and mysteries, together with the
historic fact that the greatest minds in Greece had studied with the
priest-philosophers of Helispotes and Memphis, are the main points of
circumstantial evidence whence rose Warburton’s luminous theory that
the knowledge of the “Secret One” was preserved by the esoteric, but
concealed for fear of the profane. He was an atheist who believed in a
Single Deity because he thus degraded and dishonoured the vulgar gods;
and the ancients, most pious men, solemnly tore to pieces all guilty of
similar impiety. The Arcana, however, were sacred; under their shadow
any dogma might flourish.

Some ethnologists have wondered at the remarkable coincidences between
the Etruscan cosmogony and that of Moses. The marvel is easily
explained. Both systems were borrowed from the Egyptians “skilled in
ancient learning” (Apuleius).

India and Persia, we have seen, left their Deity an abstruse and
philosophical doctrine, a mere abstraction, “infinite and eternal
Nothings.” Simple efforts of the mind and intellect, they were probably
added by after-thought to perfect and complete the Pantheon. They were
involved in the deepest gloom, whilst man’s vision was engrossed by the
stars and other objective creations familiar to his eyes, and through
them to his sensuous mind. The most ancient philosophers then theorized
concerning an Almighty Creator, believed in him by stealth and theory,
but in practice left him to oblivion and neglect. The vulgar bowed,
not to a deity, but to deifications of his attributes, which they had
rendered material and congenial.

It is to be presumed that Egypt advanced a step beyond India
and Persia, otherwise so many of her dogmas would not have been
incorporated with the Mosaic Code. Doubtless Egyptian priestly seers
made their Demiurgos not a mere being of the intellect, but a dominant
idea in religious theory, whilst the grovelling Fetissism of the people
received from them a mystic and abstruse interpretation. But herein lay
their fatal error. The priests were not only ministers of religion,
they were the repositories of every branch of useful knowledge, from
medicine to philosophy. The king was by law a priest. If a member of
the second or military caste was raised to the throne, he was at once
initiated; for the “sons of God,” as the sovereigns were called, could
belong to none but the holy order. The learned respected and revered
as types and symbols what the vulgar worshipped and adored with heart
and soul. But they kept to themselves the benefits of their reason,
and invented mysteries and gnostic ceremonies--the purple robe of
religion--to veil that Holy Truth the contemplation of whose unadorned
charms belongs to mankind. They left their fellow-creatures, “the most
religious of men,” utterly ignorant of divine knowledge, the abject
worshippers of the Nile and the desert, of the ichneumon and the cat.
True they secured to a caste the knowledge which is power amongst
semi-civilized races. But an ecclesiastical order, even in the most
extensive hierarchies, is only the fraction of a people; they divided
therefore their brother-men into priests and slaves. Woe to him who
thus bids the human mind go into darkness!

We have seen, then, that Fetissism supplanted Atheism in the
developing mind of man. Even as alchemy preceded chemistry, magic
physics, and astrology astronomy, in fact as ignorance and error have
ever paved the way for true learning, so was the worship of Nature the
fit preliminary to the worship of Nature’s God. The fulness of time now
came for the revelation of Theism, the religion of Love, and the only
dogma that has taken firm root in the hearts and minds of the nobler
types of man. It matters little what was the _modus operandi_ of this
inspiration. Any information above the common understanding of the age
is justly called a revelation, and every nation has received some by
which the human family has benefited (Dabistan). We may leave Zealots
and Thaumaturgists, Sceptics and Atheists to dispute _ad libitum_ a
point unsolvable, and which, if solved, would be of little advantage to
mankind.

Moses, whose mighty mind drew from obscurity Theism, or a belief in
the One God, to become the corner-stone of the creed, not of a few
initiated sages and esoteric students, but of a whole people--who
shared out to mankind their birthright, a knowledge of divine
truth--fully understood the fatal error of his preceptors, the priestly
sages of Egypt. His history, elaborately dressed in the garb of fable
by after-ages, appears to be this. Circumstances of an accidental
nature drove him from the banks of the Nile into the eastern deserts.
Whilst feeding the flocks of his Bedawin father-in-law amid the
awful scenery and the silent, solemn wolds of Shur, he nerved his
mind to the patriotic task, the gigantic scheme of converting into a
great nation and a Chosen People a mere handful of degraded slaves.
There, too, he made those local observations which, seen through the
mists of antiquity and exaggerated by the additions and traditions of
subsequent ages, became the groundwork of what is never wanting in
the East--wonders and signs and miracles from heaven. His powers and
energies concentrated by solitude--and there is no such strengthener of
the soul when the soul is strong--he returned to Egypt for the purpose
of carrying into execution his stupendous scheme.

But Moses found it impossible, with no stronger hold upon his people
than certain obsolete tenets almost forgotten by the unworthy
descendants of patriarchal ancestors, in the atmosphere of superstition
around him and under the baneful shadow of a hostile and priestly rule,
to elevate to the dignity of manhood the spirits of an enthralled,
despised, and therefore a degraded race. What better proof of their
degeneracy than their demanding to know the name of a God?

This is the spiritual state of the Indian Pariah, who has his idols,
but no idea of an Almighty Godhead, and who deems his dead deities
inferior in dignity to a live Brahman. What more indicative of their
mental subjection to the superstitions of Egypt than their imaging the
One Supreme by a calf or young bull, the emblem of Priapus all over the
ancient world? They were equally inferior in physical force. Manetho
numbers them at 80,000--a prodigious rate of increase, considering
their circumstances and social state, for the descendants from seventy
persons in the short space of 430 years. The compilers of the Book
of Numbers[213] give 603,550 fighting men from twenty years old and
upwards; this, with women and children, would amount to nearly three
millions of human beings--an extravagant estimate.

From this state of degradation the thousands of Israel must be
raised--must return to the condition of their ancestors the bold free
chiefs of the Bedawin. They must therefore depart from Egypt, and must
prepare themselves, morally as well as physically by the discipline
of the vast and terrible wilderness, to enter as conquerors the holy
Promised Land. Many must perish under the hardships, privations, and
fatigues of desert-travelling. According to Ibn Khaldun, the Hebrews,
debased by slavery, were unable to oppose the Philistines or Arabs of
Canaan until the old generation had died off and a new one had grown up
in the hardy life of the wilderness.

The great Lawgiver, a man of angry temper, as are all who accomplish
wonderful actions, and master of the learning of Egypt, displayed
in effecting the deliverance of his compatriots a work of itself
wonderful, a strength of will, a power of contrivance, a might of words
and deeds, which, seen by after-ages through the dim atmosphere of
tradition and the mists of national vanity, has caused him to stand
forth in the eyes of later ages a giant amongst his kind. He has been
made the subject of fable, physically as well as spiritually. Josephus
speaks of his divine form and vast stature. To the present day the
Arabs of Sinai show traces of gigantic feet and indentations made by a
rod which must have been taller than a mast. The monuments of Egypt,
so full of minute information, allude neither to Moses nor to the
Exodus. The migration of a few brickmaking slaves was, amongst a people
surrounded by nomadic tribes, an event too common, too unconsequential,
to claim a line of hieroglyph. But the people of old, in this point
reversing our modern style of national genealogy, ever strove to
dignify and to adorn their birth; and the Hebrews, who claimed the most
ancient as well as the noblest of pedigrees, could not tell the tale
of their origin as a nation without elevating its simple estate by a
hundred fables, and embellishing it with signs and marvels and wonders
tending to the honour of the Chosen People and of their great leader.

In one main point the Lawgiver miscalculated his powers. He had
proposed making of his Hebrew followers a race of pure Theists, a
kingdom of priests, a holy nation, reverencing nothing but the One
Supreme, worshipping him without medium or mediator, and therefore
independent of temples and sacerdotal castes and the long list of
ceremonies and sacred paraphernalia by which hierarchies strengthen
and perpetuate their sway. But the Hebrew mind was thoroughly unfitted
to receive pure truth. Amid the awful preternatural scenes which,
according to their own accounts, heralded the proclamation of the God
of Israel, with battle and destruction, miraculous plagues and fire and
openings of the earth ever ready to punish those who denied their Deity
or disobeyed his servants, this wonderful people were in a perpetual
state of useless gainsaying and impotent revolt. Deeply imbued with the
tenacious superstitions of the Nile, the stiff-necked race had become
irritable rather than strong under the painful training of the desert,
they longed and begged for a return to slavery, and none had eyes to
look steadfastly upon the unveiled light of Revelation emanating from
their leader and lawgiver.

Finding, after his return from temporary seclusion and retirement,[214]
his chosen people worshipping a molten calf, the god Apis, and
_playing_--in other words, a scene of Egyptian debauchery--Moses broke
in wrath the first Tables of the Law (Exod. xxxii. 19). These consisted
simply of the Ten Commandments, a forbiddal to make gods of gold and
silver, easy directions for building an earthen altar of sacrifice,
and a brief civil and criminal code embodied in three chapters. After
another term of forty days and nights spent in solitude amongst the
awful and impressive scenes which had witnessed his meditations when
feeding Jethro’s flocks, and now saw the disappointment of his early
aspirations, Moses returned with a code (Exod. xxxiv.) better fitted
to the sickly and diseased condition of the Hebrew soul. Of this the
proportion of the ritual to the moral precepts is as ten to two. It
is a priestly system, a faith of feasts and sacrifices, of holy days
and ceremonies purposely assimilated to those idolatries of Egypt with
which the minds of the people were familiar but secured to the worship
of Jehovah their God. The Lawgiver no longer disdained to borrow from
symbolical religion, especially in the ceremonial worship, which at
first he appears to have avoided. The ark and the tabernacle were old
types amongst the Egyptians, memorials of their Northern migration.
The Urim and Thummim (Ra and Thenei) were the Sun and personified
Justice--Light and Truth. The Elohim were Kneph and Pthah, the
presiding spirit and the creative intellect of the Supreme. The Spirit
of God that moved upon the face of the waters is again the Deity
Kneph. The silence with which Jehovah was to be adored appears to be an
idea borrowed from Amun Ra, the Unutterable Word, similar to the Hindu
“Aum,” which never must be spoken of man. The Tree of Life, whose fruit
made gods of those who tasted it, was a mere symbol, long before the
day of Moses incorporated in the Indian and Egyptian mythologies. It
survived in the Christian’s early belief, and has even left its traces
in the Tuba or Paradisiacal tree of El Islam.

The cosmogony of Moses may be traced to the same origin. The formation
of the globe, so different from modern theory; the separating of
matter into four elements, fiery firmament, air, sea, and earth;
and the derivation of animals from dust, were Egyptian dogmas. The
Hebrew historian held to the eternity of matter, the theory of ancient
philosophy in general.

The creation of man (Gen. i.), which we take figuratively, referring
divine resemblance to the soul, to righteousness, and to true holiness,
the Hebrews believed in literally and physically. As the Lord formed
man in his own image, so man in return anthropomorphized the Deity.
Theirs was a personal God with mortal shape and human passions, who
hated the Canaanites for no sin of their own, and loved the Hebrews for
no merit of their own, but for the sake of their ancestors. The “angry
God” and the “jealous God of Moses” stand for the orthodox opinion of
even the modern Jews.[215]

In proportion as we return to the ignorance of antiquity and seek out
the metaphysics of savage races, so we find the personality of a God,
a description of his form, and an account of his actions and passions
most prominently brought forward. Savages and barbarians cannot believe
without anthropomorphizing their Great Spirit. On the other hand,
Muslims reject the tenet. Amongst them some sects, as the Bayzawi,
deny, and hold it impiety to assert, that even in a future state the
eyes of the beatified shall see Allah.

Again, the Hebrew Paradise is the vestige of an old legend current
throughout the Eastern world. The Hindus had their Satya Yug, the
Persians Eriene Vigo, and the Greeks their Golden Age. It must be
observed, however, that, though we place the Garden upon earth, learned
Rabbis locate it in the first or lowest heaven, which is the exact
reflection of this nether world. Sakya Buddha taught that human beings
first appeared by apparitional birth. They were glorious and happy,
pure and passionless, till one of them tasted a savoury substance
produced by the earth. The example was followed by the rest; thus
purity decayed, the empire of sense gained the ascendency, excess
followed indulgence, and degeneracy excess. The same legend has been
preserved in grosser form by El Islam. Adam is made to eat wheat, and
thus became subject to human infirmities. The Magian Scriptures contain
traditions of a migratory march of the people of Hormuzd, under their
patriarch Jamshid, from Eriene Vigo or pure Iran, supposed by the
Guebres to be the primeval seat of their race, and located near Balkh,
the ancient Bactria. It was the region of all delights till Ahriman the
Evil One made in its river the Serpent of Winter. With respect to the
inhabitants of Paradise, our first parents, it may be mentioned that
many Eastern as well as Western learned men have supposed that Adam
prior to the creation of Eve was androgynous; that is to say, at once
male and female (Mirabeau).

The promulgation of Moses’ new code was not popular among the Hebrews.
Checked in his patriotic intentions, the Lawgiver, however, bravely
persisted in the course of preparation which he had commenced. Long
and long years the Chosen People wandered in danger and difficulty
round and round a region ever and in every way fitted to produce a
hardy, rugged, and warlike race. And when all was prepared for the work
of conquest, the great Leader would not head the expedition to the
Land of Promise. In his latest act he displayed the magnanimity which
had supported him through a life of labour and disappointment, the
real vigour and grandeur of his mind. Casting away the superstitions
concerning man’s body which Egypt taught, and resisting the temptation
that might have seduced a softer soul, namely, a train of mourners and
a mausoleum as a last home, he did for himself what he had done for his
followers: he wandered over the desert till his hour approached, he
chose as leader of the expedition a younger and more energetic man, and
finally he died and left the place of his tomb to this day unknown. He
bequeathed, however, to the world a cosmogony, history, and ethnography
the essence of old Oriental learning, and to the present day perhaps
the most interesting document of the kind ever penned by man. He gave
to his followers a code in which the highest intellect is blended with
experience and thought in the most trivial things; the cantonment
orders, for instance, cannot be improved in the present century. He
left men where he had found slaves, a successor trained to carry out
the favourite scheme and hope of his life, and finally a name that will
float down the stream of time till merged into the ocean of eternal
oblivion.

But Moses left his dispensation imperfect. He feared the relapse of
his followers into the dark idolatries of the Nile. He therefore dealt
only in obscure allusions to a resurrection, to another life, to
a futurity of rewards and punishments--the mighty lever with which
religion moves the moral world of man. That such was the case is proved
by this fact: the prophets and others who succeeded Moses, viewing
the future practically and not with philosophical indifference, made
in all their schemes the hereafter of man a prominent feature. The
dogma, moreover, as we have seen, was known, and well known, to all
the semi-civilized races of men. In the creed of Moses, however, a
purely temporal system of rewards and punishments supplied the place
of that future retribution so elaborated in the Hindu, the Guebre, and
the Egyptian systems. This was the great defect in his grand scheme.
The hope and fear of a life to come, of a world in which the apparent
inconsistencies of the transient mundane state shall be explained and
remedied, where suffering virtue shall triumph and triumphant vice
shall suffer--a proclivity for this belief is implanted by nature in
the very soul and heart of man. Like veneration, it is instinctive
rather than reasoning, an exertion of sentiment rather than an effect
of intellect. Against a dogma based upon such foundations it is vain
to contend. And in the moral government of the world it presents such
vantage-ground to all who would discipline and elevate mankind, that it
has been cultivated in every system, proscribed by none. The Hebrews,
however, were left to learn this essential article of faith, during
the Babylonish captivity, from the Assyrians, the Guebres, and other
Pagans.

The Jehovah of Moses, moreover, was in other points than personality
an imperfect conception. The Deity, it is true, was drawn forth from
the thick veil of mystery with which the learned of India and Egypt had
invested him. His existence was proclaimed not to a caste or a class;
it was published to a whole people. Still, he was the God of Abraham,
of Isaac, and of Jacob, not the God of Eternity--the God of all men.
A local deity, his cult and knowledge were confined to one people,
to a mere fraction of the human kind. Moses, then, was essentially a
benefactor to the Hebrews, but he was not a benefactor to man.

Presently a new Reformer appeared upon the worldly stage. The Hebrew
code had long before his day begun to decline; for forms of faith,
being but earthly things, are subject to that eternal law which to
every beginning pre-creates and ordains an end. Its decay was hastened
by political convulsions. The captivity of the Jews had supplied them
with a multitude of new and strange articles of belief derived from
their Pagan masters. Hence arose heresies and schisms, which further
weakened the ancient edifice, tottering as it was from the effects of
age, from the new creed-wants of the people, and from the shocks of
the passing events. The Sadducees, adhering to the letter, rejected
the spirit of the Books of Moses. Pharisaic superstition founded upon
tradition--that earthy alloy ever added to the pure ores of heavenly
revelation--was fast undermining the temple of Judaism. Idolatry had
perished by slow degrees out of the land; but the contrary extreme,
bibliolatry, to use a modern word, sown upon the wide ground of
priestly pride and castish prejudice, had spread rankly over the world
of Judaism. To clear away this poison growth, to reform the people of
Israel, Jesus of Nazareth began his ministry.

A man of humble fortune, but of proud birth, the Founder of
Christianity preached a creed in conformity with his circumstances. His
tenets were the Essene, the third sect of philosophizing Jews. “While
the Pharisees were heaping traditions upon the original structure
of the Mosaic system, and the Sadducees were rigidly preserving and
adhering to the simplicity of that structure, the Essene gave their
whole mind to the ascertainment and realization of its moral import.”
They were thus the Sufis, the Spiritualists, and the Gnostics of
Judaism. They abounded most at Alexandria, then the grand centre where
the Greek and the Roman, the Indian and the Persian, met the Arab
and the Egyptian. A species of anchorite philosophers, they called
themselves physicians of souls and bodies; they lived in voluntary
poverty, rigid chastity, and implicit obedience to the civil power;
they were purists in language, non-resistants, and haters of political
action.

Such tenets, publicly announced as a voice from heaven, were of course
offensive to the ruling factions at Jerusalem. The people also that
flocked to the preaching of the new Prophet were disappointed by his
proclaiming to them a spiritual kingdom not the heritage of wealth,
splendour, and glory, so distinctly promised to them by the seers of
former generations. They were but poorly put off with a type or symbol.
A reformer is rarely popular, and reform is a dangerous work among
a people so hasty and headstrong as the Jews. But Christ’s teaching
was not for the Jews only; he was preparing to spread abroad amongst
mankind a knowledge of the One Supreme, when, falling a victim to
priestly wiles, the Prophet of Nazareth suffered an ignominious death.
But he had given an impetus to the progress of mankind by systematizing
a religion of the highest moral loveliness, showing what an imperfect
race can and may become; and by the labour of a devoted life he had
instituted a college of successors who after him might preach the glad
tidings to all the nations of the earth.

The Prophet of Nazareth had declared his mission to be for the purpose
of establishing and confirming the Law of Moses. As it first appeared,
Christianity was rather strong in the weakness around it than strong
in its own strength. It was a system for anchorites and ascetics.
The reformed faith abounded also in a matter usually consigned in the
East to bards and mystics; namely, principles of almost superhuman
beauty often couched in highly poetical language, principles not the
creation of one mind, but the current coinage of philanthropy from
time immemorial. Islam all over the East has left its principles as a
heritage to poets, and right well have they performed their duty to
mankind. From the literature of the Hindus and Persians, the Egyptians
and the Arabs, it would be easy to collect a code of morality and a law
of benevolence as pure and amiable as ever entered the heart of man.
The whole practice of the Sufi consists in seeking the Divinity, not
as the “popular prudential and mercenary devotee,” but from fervency
of love to God and man. He “proclaims the invisible truth above the
visible comfort”; his entire resignation can face the horrors of
eternal death inflicted by divine Will; “he has something higher even
than everlasting gain.”

Eventually, however, this almost supernatural morality, incorporated
with a creed to the detriment of its practical tendency; this
substitution of love for justice, of mercy for retribution, of
forgiveness for punishment; this purely spiritual system, that first
neglected all the most necessary material details of ablution,
dietetics, and even formulæ and positions of prayer, could never endure
in the sensuous and passionate populations of the East. From its
further hold upon the instincts, the affections, and the prepossessions
of the Jews, this reformation had neither extension nor continuance.
The Ceremonial Law of Moses, adapted to an idle and unoccupied race
in a temperate climate and a land of plenty with its operose and
time-wasting system of prayer and purification, of festivals and
processions, was it is true at first not abolished but confirmed.
But a simple and far more catholic system was required for the wants
of the universe. Amongst the inspired followers of the Founder of
Christianity one was found capable of executing the task. With a
daring hand Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, rent asunder the tie
connecting Christianity with Judaism. His efforts were crowned with
success. He offered to the great family of man a Church with a Deity
at its head and a religion peculiarly of principles. He left the moral
code of Christianity untouched in its loveliness. But he abolished
the civil and criminal law of Moses. And he boldly did away with the
long-cherished customs and the ordinances of food and diet which in
olden times were used as the means of segregating the Israelites from
the races around them. Circumcision was no longer necessary, although
his divine Master had submitted to the rite; the distinction between
beings pure and impure, one of the strongholds of Judaism, was broken
down; and finally, as neophytes began to multiply, the Gentile was
raised to the level of the Jew.

The last step taken by the stern Apostle suggests the possibility of
his having determined to disconnect totally the reformed religion
with Judæa. A Roman himself, and therefore well acquainted with that
ruling race, and convinced of their physical and psychical superiority
over the Asiatic family, he courted conveyance to Rome, and there
energetically carried on the work of propagandism. He died a martyr;
but not in vain was his blood shed. From the grain of faith implanted
by him in the little dungeon below the Capitol sprang a goodly tree,
under whose comfortable shade half the civilized world have found
repose. In process of time the offshoots spread amongst the noble
barbarians of the North, then beginning to occupy the stage of the
world. Christianity, which in Judæa and confined to the East would
have been the faith of a few hermits and visionaries, acquired in
Europe a depth and fervency of popular belief which shortly overthrew
all opposition. It is not wonderful that in this course of events the
Christian distinguishes the finger of God!

When the master-minds had vanished from the scene, their successors in
the East introduced other and less defensible changes. Christianity in
the East was surrounded by the impurest of influences. Its latitude
of belief and absence of ceremonial allowed it to be worked upon by
the theurgic incarnations of the Buddhists, the demiurgic theories
of the Eastern and Western Gnostics, the Triad of the Brahmans, the
Dualism of the Persians, the Pharisaic doctrine of the first Son of
the Supreme--Osiris in a new shape--together with the metaphysics
of the Ebionites, the Speculatists, and other sects of Grecian or
rather of Egyptian origin. From the Straits of Hercules to the coast
of Coromandel, it was split up into a legion of heresies and schisms.
Syria and Arabia seem to have been the grand central focus. The Church
was distracted by the frowardness of her children, and the Religion of
Love was dishonoured by malice and hate, persecution and bloodshed.

Still the reformed religion throve--and what tenets do not?--under the
influence of a moderate persecution. When, however, under the rule of
Constantine, the sun of prosperity poured its splendours full upon
the favoured faith, an ascetic enthusiasm, gloomy ideas of seclusion,
celibacy, and self-immolation, and a censure on wealth and industry
pronounced by religious hallucination, in fact the poisonous portions
of the Essene School, spread subtilely through the whole body of
Christianity. Everywhere in the East these practices require to be
suppressed, not to be encouraged. Where the face of Nature is gay and
riant, to impressionize mankind gloom and horror in the World of Spirit
are contrasted with the glory and the brilliancy of the scenes of
sense. This is the stronghold of the Demonolatry and Witchcraft of the
Fetissist, the abominable paganisms of the Hindu, the superstitious
follies of the Guebre, and the terrible Sabaism of the ancient Mexican.
All are perfectly suitable to the genius of the people, to the climate,
and to the scenery around them.

Thus in Syria and Egypt Christianity became degraded. It sank into
a species of idolatry. The acme of absurdity was attained by the
Stylites, who conceived that mankind had no nobler end than to live
and die upon the capital of a column. Thus nations were weakened.
Self-mortification and religious penances soon degenerate a race,
especially in hot climates, where a moderate indulgence in the
comforts, the luxuries, and the pleasures of life strengthens the
body and with it the mind of man. The founders of Christianity had
neglected to insist upon daily prayer at stated times, and ceremonial
cleanliness, which is next to godliness. They forgot those dietetic
directions and prescriptions so necessary in the East, and allowed the
use of inebrients, together with impure and unwholesome meats as pork
and rabbit’s flesh. Man’s physique suffered from their improvidence.
Thus, whilst Christianity increased in numbers and powers, some once
populous and flourishing countries--Egypt for instance--declined, and
fell to the lowest depths of degradation. It is the race of man that
exalts the faith in proportion to man’s moral and material excellence.
The faith fails, on the other hand, to raise a degraded race. The
Armenians and Abyssinians have derived little from the specific
virtues of Christianity. Inferior in mind and body to the Turks and
Arabs, they have degenerated into a semi-idolatry at once ridiculous
and contemptible. With respect to moral conduct, a modern traveller
(Curzon, _Armenia_) has had the courage openly to state that in Turkey
not one-tenth part of the crime exists which is annually committed
in Christendom. Sectarians are fond of citing in favour of their
Reformation the superiority of the Protestant over the Catholic cantons
of Switzerland. They forget that the former belong to the hardy and
industrious nations of the North, and that the latter are in climate
and population indolent Southrons.

To return eastward. About the sixth century of its era the Christian
world called loudly for reform. When things were at their worst,
Muhammad first appeared upon the stage of life. It is here proposed
to touch briefly upon the points wherein due measure of justice has
not yet been dealt by philosophic and learned Europe to the merits
and value of El Islam. The Western nations were so long taught to
look upon the forcible propagandism of Muhammad as a creed personally
hostile to them, they were so deeply offended by the intolerant Deism
and Monotheism of the scheme, and finally so rancoured by their fierce
wars and deadly collisions with the Muslim, that certain false views
have long been, and still continue to be, part or rather essence of
the subject. And though in this our modern day a wiser and more
catholic spirit of inquiry and judgment has not been deterred from
manifesting itself, still even in the writings of those who pride
themselves most upon candour and freedom from prejudice not a little
of the bad old leaven offends the taste. Men do not now, it is true,
fear the imputation of “turning Turk”[216]--an expression since become
common, and coupled by old writers (Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_)
with “betraying father, prince, and country, forsaking religion, and
abjuring God.” Nor does there survive in Europe the former rancorous
hate for the founder and creed, for the apostles and followers of El
Islam. Still, it is to be repeated the Saving Faith has not yet been
allowed to assume its proper rank and position amongst the religions
of the world. And the moderns rather busy themselves in philosophizing
over and in detecting flaws and falsehood rather than in seeking
out the truth, the merits, and the beauties of a religion which for
thirteen centuries has been the light and “life guidance” of one-fifth
of mankind (Carlyle, _Hero Worship_).

These four are briefly the most popular errors of the present day upon
the subject of El Islam:

In the first place, it is determined to be merely a perceptive
faith, and therefore adapted only to that portion of mankind whose
minds, still undeveloped and uncultivated, are unripe for a religion
of principles. This is partly correct of the corrupted, untrue of
the pure, belief; it will somewhat apply to the tenets of the Turks
and Persians, but not to those of the first Muslims and the modern
Wahhabis. The spirit of the religion, its sentiments, and its æsthetics
were committed to the poets of El Islam, and right worthily have they
fulfilled their task. It is not too much to assert that almost every
celebrated metrical composition amongst Muslims is either directly or
indirectly devotional. Even the licentious Anacreons of Persia and
India, Hafiz and Jafar i Zatalli, disguise their grossness under a garb
of mystical _double entente_.

But even in their purely spiritual songs and hymns the poets of
El Islam do not betray that poverty of invention and puerility of
imagination that distinguish the religious rhymesters of Christianity.
In the great and noble literature of England, for instance, there is
but one poem founded upon the base of revelation--_Paradise Lost_.
Who can arise from its perusal without the conviction that a splendid
genius has so fettered himself with his theme that many ballad-mongers
have produced more poetical effects upon the reader? Who rises
without disgust at the dialogues of the Father and the Son in which
is discussed at length Calvinistic sectarianism? And what Christian,
who deems his Holy Trinity a sacred mystery of the Spirit beyond, not
contrary to, material reason, would not blush to see his Divinity thus
degraded in the eyes of the stern deistical Muslim?

The Koran--the only standard of divine Truth universally admitted by
El Islam--consists of threefold matter: of historical and legendary
lore, of principles moral and psychical, and of materials for a loose
and scattered code of laws. And here, it may be observed, that, with
perhaps the exception of the Pentateuch, which we have seen required
its tradition, no code embodied in the sacred writings of any race
has sufficed to govern it. What Christian nation has ever been ruled
by Christian law? Even its codes are either of its own invention or
borrowed from ancient custom or translated from Pagan legislation. No
divine system yet promulgated to mankind has sufficed for the civil and
criminal wants of future and more civilized generations. And thus it
was with the Koran. The precepts of the Saving Faith were not fixed and
definite enough for the sensuous and objective spirit of the East. In
religion, as in politics, wherever public opinion is lax and impotent,
law is, and must be, a mass of stringent ordinances so disposed as to
provide for every contingency. Such codes cannot deal in principles and
spirit; these must be extracted--by the few that require them--from a
well-organized system of practical precepts. Thus the Muslim in the
earliest ages sought to supply the imperfections of the code bequeathed
to him. A remedy was at hand. The deceased Prophet’s sayings were
still fresh in the minds of his wives and immediate descendants, of his
companions, and his early successors. All lent their best endeavours
to the pious task. The earliest traditions were of sensible and useful
import. Presently the most trivial precepts and the most puerile
practices were either forged or remembered by so-called saints who made
this collection the business of their lives. Thus in course of time and
by slow degrees appeared that bulky mass of traditional lore popularly
known as the Ahadis or Sayings and the Sunnat or Doings of the Prophet.

By such arts were subtle practices and silly legends grafted by
scholasticism upon the primitive annals and laws of El Islam. In that
faith almost every tenet or practice to which the philosopher could
object may be traced to the Sunnat and Ahadis; the Koran is wholly free
from them. Amongst others, upon these, and upon these solely, must be
charged the defect of making the system eminently perceptive. Muhammad,
like all other Eastern lawgivers, had suited his ordinances to the
genius of his people by addressing them as semi-civilized men. The
schools degraded their Muslims to the intellectual rank of babes and
sucklings.

Regarding these Sunnat and Ahadis, however, it must be borne in mind
that they are purely sectarian. The four self-called orthodox schools
hold to one tradition. The principal heresies, as the Shiahs and the
Bayzawi, have their own recognized collections, whence all emanations
from impure, that is to say, from other sources, have been carefully
removed. But El Islam has existed, and can exist, independently
of them. Had the Wahhabis, those Puritans or rather Reformers of
the Saving Faith, succeeded in restoring to the Arabs their simple
primitive belief, little of the Ahadis and the Sunnat would have been
left to misguide and offend mankind.

Secondly, men object that the Saving Faith is one of pure sensuality.
It is difficult to divine how this most erroneous estimate could have
been formed except by the grossest ignorance. Possibly it was a vicious
conclusion thus drawn: that as the Muslim’s Paradise is one of sense,
consequently there is no limit to his sensuality in this world. But El
Jannat, or the Heavenly Garden, has many mansions; the ignorant and
savage, the hungry and sensual Bedawin will taste the flesh of birds,
live in a golden house, command any number of angelic wives, and drink
the nectars of Kafur and Zingibil. But, as in Christianity so in El
Islam, eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath fancy conceived
the spiritual joys of those who in mundane life have qualified
themselves for heavenly futurity. The popular error that the Muslim
Prophet denied immortal souls to women, and therefore degraded them to
the mere instruments of man’s comfort and passions, might also have
tended to represent El Islam as a scheme of sense. Possibly, again,
the monogamic races of a Northern clime--for monogamy, polygamy, and
polyandry are an affair of geography--shocked by the permission to
marry four wives and to maintain an indefinite number of concubines,
overlooked in characterizing Muhammad’s ordinances the strict limits
therein laid down for luxury and pleasure. The Muslim may not take to
himself a single spouse, unless able to make a settlement upon her,
to support, clothe, and satisfy her. He must act with the most rigid
impartiality towards the whole household, and strictly avoid showing
undue preference. He is allowed four wives with a view of increasing
and multiplying his tribe. Man in hot and enervating climates coming to
maturity early, and soon losing the powers which he is tempted by moral
as well as physical agencies to abuse, would never raise up a large
family as the husband of only one wife. Like the Patriarchs, he must
have handmaids. Like the Jews, he must be allowed polygamy and power
of divorce. These, forbidden by the ascetic Essene, are necessary to
the increase of mankind in the East, and no religion can consecrate an
ordinance which, directly opposed to the first law given by the Creator
to his creatures (Genesis), tends to check that natural increase of
population which is the foundation of all progress and civilization.

Laying aside these considerations as too shallow for discussion, can
we call that faith sensual which forbids a man to look upon a statue
or a picture? Which condemns even the most moderate use of inebrients,
and indeed is not certain upon the subject of coffee and tobacco?
Which will not allow even the most harmless game of chance or skill?
Which rigorously prohibits music, dancing, and even poetry and works
of fiction upon any but strictly religious subjects? Above all things,
which debars man from the charms of female society, making sinful a
glance at a strange woman’s unveiled face? A religion whose votaries
must pray five times a day at all seasons, in joy as in sorrow, in
sickness as in health? A system which demands regular almsgiving and
forbids all manner of interest upon money to those who would be saved?
Whose yearly fast often becomes one of the severest trials to which
the human frame can be exposed? To whom distant pilgrimage with all
its trials and hardships is obligatory at least once in life? Whose
Prophet exclaimed, like the Founder of Christianity, [Arabic: الفقر
فخري: Al-faqru fakhary][217] (Poverty is my pride), and who taught his
followers that two things ruin men, “much wealth and many words”?

Those who best know El Islam, instead of charging it with sensuality,
lament its leaven of asceticism. They regret to see men investing these
fair nether scenes with mourning hues; “the world is the Muslim’s
prison, the tomb his stronghold, and Paradise his journey’s end.” But
this could not be otherwise. Asceticism and celibacy are the wonted
growth of hot and Southern climates, where man appears liable to a
manner of religious monomania. The Brahman householder, after doing
his duty to mankind by becoming a husband and the father of a family,
ought by the law of Menu to leave the world and to end life a Sanyasi
amongst the beasts of the jungle. No religion is more monastic than
Buddhism; yet it is atheistic. Thus the votaries of this organized
system of selfishness, this vast scheme of profits and losses, reduced
to regularity, are deprived of all hope in death, and yet live the
most comfortless and unnatural of lives. “The world knows nothing of
its greatest men,” is true in more views than one. To the Muslim, time
is but a point in illimitable eternity, life is but a step from the
womb to the tomb. He passes from this world directly into the other,
but not into a new existence; its every aspect and circumstance is as
familiar to his mind as is the routine of earthly existence. He has no
great secret to learn. The Valley of Death has no shadow for him;[218]
no darkness of uncertainty and doubt horrifies his fancy. So it came
to pass that, although Muhammad expressly and repeatedly declared,
“There is no monkery in El Islam,” few schemes have produced a more
systematic or rigid asceticism. Even before his death monasticism
began to appear; and now the Muslim world is overrun with Sufis and
Kalandars, with Fakirs and Derwayshes, with Santons and recluses.

The third error is that the Founder of the Saving Faith began his
ministry as an enthusiast and ended as an impostor. This is the
improved modern fashion of treating the “perjuryose lying Machomete”
of our forefathers. We are less gross and dogmatical than they were,
though scarcely more charitable or philosophical. The recognized proofs
of “imposition” seem to be:

Firstly, the convenient appearance of the Ayát, or inspired Versets.
But what would have been their use had they not descended when wanted
to solve a difficulty or convey a precept? Do we doubt the Books
of Moses because Revelation is conducted upon precisely the same
principle? And who will deny that enthusiasm would have produced them
more effectually than fraud? It is a general rule that to deceive
others well we must first deceive ourselves. He that would be believed
in by others must thoroughly believe in himself. Is it likely that such
men as Abubekr and Umar would become the victims of a mere fraud, so
palpable to every petty annalist and compiler in this our modern day?
Neither they nor Muhammad even at his dying hour seem to have doubted
his inspiration. The Prophet’s last words were, “Prayer! Prayer!” And,
according to the Shiahs, a few minutes before breathing his last he
called for an inkholder and a pen to write the name of his successor.
Is this the death-bed scene of a hypocrite or an impostor?

Secondly, the delivery of the inspiration by the Archangel Gabriel,
and the frequent visions of heaven and heavenly beings recorded by
the Muslim Prophet. Without having recourse to any other explanation,
are not instances of the kind perpetually recorded in the history of
mankind? And granting that such apparitions are purely subjective,
shall we charge with fraud all those subject to them? How often has
the Founder of Christianity appeared to the highly imaginative races
of Southern Europe? How frequently have fervent Muslims been favoured
with “a call” by Muhammad and Ali? Physicians and men of science have
accounted for these seemingly marvellous apparitions by natural causes.
Why then, unless by the action of mere prejudice, should we determine
the same thing to be imposture in one man and yet regard it with
reverence in another? Who also has even ventured to decide what the
_modus inspirandi_ or the divine afflatus really is? The most ancient
theory apparently is that angels ([Greek: αγγελοι: angeloi]) were used
as messengers between God and man; and thus the Muslims, whose tenets
are identical in this point with the Jews, rank angelic below human
nature.

Thirdly, the change from peaceful to warlike language, from the arts of
eloquence and persuasion to the propagandism of fire and steel. But did
not the Founder of Christianity declare, “I came not to send peace, but
a sword” (Matt, x. 34)? And did Moses disdain to place carnal weapons
in the hands of his people? The great Lawgiver of Israel sanctioned
the murder in cold blood of women and childish captives. Even kings
were hewed in pieces before the Lord. These atrocities were strictly
forbidden by Muhammad. Even forcible proselytism was not allowed. The
_protégé_ of El Islam paid a small capitation tax, and was allowed to
practise his faith and to worship his God as his law directed. Had,
moreover, the Prophet forged the fresh order to propagate his scheme
by the sword, surely he was not so shallow an impostor as to leave
behind him those peaceful revelations which might so easily have been
cast into the fire. No; the man honestly believed, like Moses, that the
voice of Allah spoke within him.

The fourth error is that Muhammad, unable to abolish certain
superstitious rites and customs of the ancient and Pagan Arabs,
incorporated them into his scheme, and thus propitiated many that
before avoided him. We have seen that the same might be objected to
Moses. But Muhammad may surely have believed in the defilement of
Allah’s holy places by Pagans, and have restored them to their pure
original purposes. Thus the Kaabah, that Pantheon of the idolater, was
given to El Islam as the house built by Abraham and Ishmael. And what
antiquary so wise as to declare that the Friend of God did not visit
Mecca and there lay the foundations of a mosque and an abode?[219] The
gigantic tombs of Adam and Eve at Mecca and Jeddah were in the olden
times places of litholatry. Yet might not the numerous Arab Christians,
in whose religion Muhammad believed before the old dispensation was
abrogated by a new scheme, have had traditions concerning the meeting
of our first parents on the Mount of Arafat, and their sepulture in
the Holy Land? Mecca was at that time consecrated by no less than five
religions. The Guebre had established there the Shrine of Saturn. The
Hindu had made it the residence of the third person of his triad. The
Pagan Arabs had erected there a gigantic Pantheon. The Jews revered it
because, as Ibn Shaybat relates, Moses and Aaron performed pilgrimages
there; when the famous Tobba Judaized, he invested the house with a
splendid curtain. And, finally, the Christians, according to some
authors, had procured admission into the Kaabah for the images of the
Virgin and Child. Colonists and expatriated men readily connect the
remarkable events and incidents of their religion and history with
the strange objects revered in foreign lands. The Muslims in Sindh, as
an instance, have occupied in force most of the sacred places of the
Hindus; often, too, both Monotheist and Polytheist worship at the same
shrine. The original Yoni becomes a Da'asah, or footprint of Hazrat
Ali; and the sacred alligator of the Hindus is revered as the creation
of a Muslim saint. Thus in Ceylon Buddha’s retreat has become Adam’s
Peak. The description of St. Mary and the Holy Infant resting in the
shade of the sycamore tree of Heliopolis in the old apocryphal gospels
is clearly borrowed from the old Egyptian symbol, Isis with Horus in
her lap sitting under the Hiero-sycaminon. In the incorporations of
traditions then current amongst the Arab Christians there is no valid
reason for charging Muhammad with fraud.

To rank the Saving Faith amongst the religions of the world, it is
necessary briefly to relate what its founder did for mankind. A youth
of noble origin, but fallen fortunes, as was the Prophet of Nazareth,
he was strengthened like the Jewish Lawgiver Moses by travel, solitude,
and meditation. Jebel Hira was his Mount Horeb. But though surrounded
by learned Jew and Christian, his education was defective; and though,
a genuine Arab, he thought strongly and clearly, and he was a perfect
master of eloquence, he had none of that knowledge which passes for a
preternaturalism amongst a barbarous people. His probity won for him
in early manhood the surname of El Amin, or the Trusty, and his noble
qualities enabled him to marry the wealthy widow in whose service he
had lived a hireling.

After a long course of meditation, fired with anger by the absurd
fanaticism of the Jews, the superstitions of the Syrian and
Arabian Christians, and the horrid idolatries of his unbelieving
countrymen, an enthusiast too--and what great soul has not been an
enthusiast?--he determined to reform those abuses which rendered
revelation contemptible to the learned and prejudicial to the vulgar.
He introduced himself as one inspired to a body of his relations and
fellow-clansmen. The step was a failure, except that it won for him
a proselyte worth a thousand sabres in the person of Ali, son of Abu
Talib. With an uncommon mixture of prudence and energy he pursued his
task till he overcame the hate, the ridicule, and the persecution of
such men as Abubekr, Umar, and Usman. Expelled by the violence of
his enemies, he fled his native city--a wonderful contrast to the
fierceness and the impatience of his race. But after a long course of
meekness and longsuffering in the work of proselytizing, his spirit,
like that of Moses, rose high against violence and oppression, and at
last--for he was an Arab--abrogating his peaceful precepts he appealed
to the God of Battles in his combat for a righteous cause. Heroes and
mighty men like Hamzah Khalid and Amru el Ays flocked to his standard,
and his personal valour and high qualities as a guerilla soldier soon
led him on to fortune. After several years’ exile, he re-entered as a
visitor the walls of his native city, whence he had fled persecuted and
proscribed. And he lived long enough to witness the splendid success of
his early projects.

Abolishing all belief in a local or personal God, he announced to his
Arabs the One Supreme, now in terms as terrible as man could bear,
then in words so lofty and majestic that they sank for ever into the
heart-core of his followers. He broke to pieces with his own hand
the images of the Kaabah, and he witnessed the total extinction of
a gigantic idolatry--a work of itself sufficient to immortalize the
memory of one reformer. He said of the Deity, “He is not enclosed by
the bonds of space or by the limits of time; he hath no form which
requireth a former from whom he is free; and whatever concerning him
entereth thy mind to that he is the contrary.” He preached Allah, the
God unapprehensible, incomprehensible, omnipotent, all-beneficent,
spiritual, and eternal.

He revived the earliest scheme of Mosaicism and the pristine simplicity
of Christianity by making every man priest and patriarch of his own
household. Preceding faiths had attempted to elevate human nature above
itself, and had, as might be expected, degraded the object of their
endeavours. He inculcated the dignity of man instead of perpetually
preaching human degradation, he respected mortal nature, and therefore
he made his scheme eminently practical with something of a higher
flight. He did away with the incestuous marriage with a father’s widow;
he abolished the Wad el Banat, or the murderous inhumation of female
children. He corrected the laxity and immorality of the age by making
drinking and gambling penal offences, and by forbidding modest women to
appear in public unveiled. Finally, to mention no other great and good
works, by the enunciation of a modified Fatalism--they greatly err who
confound it with an absolute Predestination--he attempted to check that
tendency of self-mortification which he could not wholly expel from
the affections of his countrymen. He died, not like an enthusiast or
an impostor, but as one true to the tenets and practices of his life;
and he bequeathed to the world a Law and a Faith than which none has
been more firmly or more fervently believed in by mankind, whose wide
prevalence--wider indeed than that of any other creed--alone suffices
to prove its extrinsic value to the human family. This much did
Muhammad for his fellow-creatures.

Can we wonder that the Arabian Prophet, finding himself, despite the
accidents of fortune, of time, and place, so much in advance of his
age, so solitary a being amongst the fanatic, the superstitious, and
the debased, fondly believed himself Allah’s Apostle, and the chosen
instrument of man’s regeneration? Considering the ardent temperament
of the Arab, his high development of veneration, and his discerning
the divine hand in every human work and change, can we marvel that he
attributed the fire of his soul and the strong workings of his mind
to a something preternatural--an inspiration or a revelation? The
celebrated mystic Mansur el Hallaj was stoned by the crowd for using
the words, “I am Truth” (_i.e._ the Lord). But his Sufi confraternity
still explain away the apparent irreverence of the saying, and believe
him to have been, as was said of Spinoza, a God-intoxicated man.

Muhammad’s mission, then, was one purely of reform. He held that four
dispensations had preceded his own, and that his object was to restore
their pristine purity. But the Adamical had been obsoletized by the
Noachian scheme; and this by the Mosaic, which in its turn becoming
defunct, had left all its powers and prerogatives to Christianity; thus
also the latter dispensation in the fulness of time had been superseded
by the revelations of El Islam, the Saving Faith. All the past was now
effete and abrogated. All the future would be mere imposture; for his
was the latest of religions, he the Soul of the Prophets. He accused
the Jews and Christians of entire corruption, of spiritual death,
and preached to them with fervour a new faith, a doctrine of life. He
openly charged them with having altered and remodelled their sacred
writings.[220] Nor could this charge be denied. It is now, and was
then, impossible to discover what Moses wrote or what was written for
him by Ezra the scribe and other compilers. The difference of style and
language, the frequent changes from the first person to the third, and
finally the account of the Lawgiver’s death and burial conclusively
prove that the Pentateuch had in its present state more than one
author. Probably the original draught was concise and short.

Even the Koran contained little that was new. With the exception of
some legends, the addition of some regulations touching the daily
prayers and the purification of property, with a few ordinances as that
of Diyat or blood-money, disallowed by the Pentateuch (Numb. xxxv. and
Deut. xix.), but rendered necessary by the state of Arab society, and
some dietetic modifications--the camel for instance and the horse were
recognized as pure food,--the Koran might almost be extracted from the
Mosaic and Rabbinical writings, from the Evangelists and apocryphalists
of the Christian era. There is also but little to commend in it, except
its fiery and commanding eloquence. As a code of laws it is eminently
defective. He who could write such a work could have written much
better. Muhammad, however, relied for the success of his mission upon
far higher claims than any book.

Muhammad laid no claims to prophecy or to miracles. He called himself
El Rasúl, and El Nabbi, the announcer of good tidings from Allah to
the Adamites. He did not give his name to a new system of belief; his
ordinances were designated in a mass as El Islam, the Salvation or the
Saving Faith. His night journey to heaven, the subject of so much
opprobrious declamation, was either a vision or a dream. The splitting
of the moon, a tale so monstrously told by his posterity, rests upon
no broader basis than a line in the Koran which might properly be
translated: “The hour [of Judgment] shall come, and the moon shall
cleave asunder.” Probably this absurdity was the invention of followers
who determined to dispute for their lawgiver with Joshua’s command over
the host of heaven. An ignorant Afghan is said to have boasted that his
Pir, or spiritual pastor, the celebrated poet Abd el Kahman, was in the
habit of making night journeys like Muhammad to Paradise, and to have
bastinadoed the holy man severely when, taxed with impiety, he denied
the irreverent assertion. Such a Muhaddis, or relater of the Prophet’s
sayings, as Abu Hurayrah, the Father of the Kitten, may fairly, to
judge him by his recognized writings, be suspected of such a forgery.
Muhammad the more especially disdained the claim to miraculous powers
which, as those who know Eastern lands, belong to every petty saint and
village santon. The “most extraordinary of ordinary men,” the historian
Hume, inferred that, because he himself had never seen a miracle, no
one else ever saw a miracle. The Oriental traveller will disbelieve in
miracles for the opposite reason--because he has seen so many.

The rapid and extensive spread of El Islam, considered by the Faithful
a remarkable instance of divine aid, is to be accounted for without
the intervention of a Deity. The Arabs poured forth from their great
centre, till the whole surplus population was exhausted. Everywhere
they appeared as liberators of slaves, especially in Turkey and Persia,
where an artificial and over-refined state of society had produced
tyrannical despots, an innumerable and insatiable nobility, and a
people robbed and spoiled. Another circumstance favoured the growth of
“the Religion of the Heavens and the Earth.” Whether we consider the
Arabs to have been the aborigines of their native wilds, or, as the
modern theory is, we derive them from the Highlands of Æthiopia, it is
certain that their great success lay amongst a kindred people speaking
cognate languages. From the earliest times, indeed, Arabia had sent
forth several extensive streams of emigration. Essentially an Asiatic
form of belief, El Islam could not progress beyond the barriers opposed
to it by geography. Not having a St. Paul to modify, to change it, the
Saving Faith broke upon the rock of a new race.

But this I claim for El Islam.

The recurring purpose which runs through the world is chiefly
manifested by the higher esteem in which man holds man. David made him
little lower than the angels. Christianity, a system of asceticism,
confirmed this estimate: we are fallen beings, fallen not through
our own fault; condemned to eternal death, not by our own demerits;
ransomed by a Divine Being, not through our own merits. El Islam, on
the contrary, raised man from this debased status, and with the sound
good sense which characterizes the creed inspired and raised him in the
scale of creation by teaching him the dignity of human nature. Thus
modern Spiritualism is giving a shock to Christianity, whereas El Islam
has power to resist it.

But, however El Islam prospered amongst the kindred races, it fell flat
elsewhere. No power of propagandism availed in China. In Southern Spain
the faith maintained itself for a long time; its letter and spirit,
however, were almost lost. The Zegris and Abencerrages were European
knights, not Eastern. And when pushed forward into a Northern people,
a single destructive defeat sufficed to set for it bounds which it has
never attempted to cross. In Hungary and Austria again, with a tenfold
power, it failed to establish a footing; and when “Holy Russia” became
sufficiently united to be powerful, El Islam was cast out like a corpse.

Again, what reconciled the ancient Muslim and endears the modern
to his creed is its noble simplicity. The votary has little or
nothing comparatively speaking to pay for his moral and spiritual
necessary--religion. He has no tithes, and few fees. His places of
worship are built and maintained by religious bequests, carefully
guarded by law and custom. Muhammad Ali, it is true, confiscated
the “Wakf” left to many of the Cairene mosques and tombs. He also,
following the example of Turkey, substituted at Mecca and El Medinah
yearly pensions for the produce of their ancient extensive church
lands. But he carried out these measures among Egyptians, a race of men
whose languor and apathy require repeated inducements to fight for the
faith; in Kabul and Bokhara the boldest and most powerful extortioners
would hardly venture upon such a sacrilege. The Islam Muslim, moreover,
has no priesthood; those whose duty it is to preach and pray to the
people are not churchmen; they temporarily receive from the Wahil, or
mosque-warden, a few piastres per month; but all must live by some
honest secular calling. Even the Sultan, the Defender of the Faith, the
Representative of the Khalifs, and the Vicegerent of Allah upon earth,
does not disdain handicraft, to make and sell toothpicks. Finally, the
Muslim has no baptism; he is circumcised by a barber; he can marry
himself with a reason for deviating from popular custom; and he can be
bathed, buried, and prayed over by any lay fellow-religionist.

It is generally believed in Europe that El Islam is on the decline;
and the old prejudices bequeathed by Crusades tend to make the
assertion popular. It is based upon insufficient grounds. With as much
correctness might the Muslim predict the present fall of Christianity
by the heresies and schisms that distract the Church, from the wide
spread of visionary Swedenborgians and of the shallow imposture
Mormonism.[221] Turkey and Egypt may show traces of latitudinarianism,
even as France and Germany have done; no Muslim people, however, has
yet ventured to abolish El Islam by law. But Arabia and Afghanistan
still stand firm as in the first ages of the faith. Generally it may be
remarked that in Eastern religions the propagandism and missioning of
the West has tended to strengthen and confirm the tenets against which
they have been directed. Thus Hinduism, after giving a few outcasts to
Christianity, has entrenched itself behind the stronghold of Vedantism;
the learned are pure Deists, the ignorant pure idolaters. Buddhism
remains untouched, and the very nature of its encyclopedian tenets
renders it unassailable. Even the sect of Guebres has been strengthened
by polemical arguments, and bids fair to rival its antagonists in
disputative theology. In spite of the mighty force brought against
it, the Parsee converts to Christianity might be numbered on a man’s
fingers. Nor can these faiths yield to compulsion. The laws of Menu,
of Zoroaster, and of Muhammad have still bulwarks not easily to be
battered down. And should Christianity, as it has often threatened,
ever meet the Saving Faith in mortal conflict, and the Cross assail the
Crescent in the latest of crusades, the Muslim scimitar, rusty as it is
with the rust of ages, will prove the good metal of which it was in the
beginning forged.

Supposing, however, El Islam abolished by civilization, underminded
by the slow action of the Christian Powers closing around it, or
become decrepit from old age, what would be the result? Some renewal
essentially the same, formally different; some revival of its eternal
principle, Monotheism, disguised under a fresh garb of those outward
accidents that constitute a religion. Such has ever been the history of
the world’s creeds. At all times

                  emerging from the storm,
    Primeval faith uplifts her changeful form,
    Mounts from her funeral pile on wings of flame,
    And soars and shines another and the same.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[211] Existence of God is not “the common and almost universal belief
of mankind.” The truth that there is a God is usually thus demonstrated:

1. Physical argument, in which effects and events are traced to causes,
till arrival at a First Cause, uncaused.

2. Argument from final causes and design, of which innumerable
evidences in physical and mental worlds point to a Great Original
Designer.

3. Moral argument, based upon innate feeling of obligation and
responsibility.

4. Historical argument and the consensus of mankind.

[212] The idea that man is a compound being, consisting partly of
spirit and partly of matter, mysteriously linked together, and acting
and reacting upon each other, is a neocosmic dream. Savages hold mind
to be a property of matter, like philosophers.

[213] [Chap i. 46.]

[214] Deuteronomy ix. 9. The term was forty days and nights. Amongst
Muslims this has become the recognized period of isolation for those
who are being initiated in mystical and magical practices. It is,
however, directly opposed to the spirit and letter of El Islam.

[215] A modern philosopher was accustomed to say: “And as for that
Christianity which is such, according to the fashion of modern
philosophers and pantheists, without a personal God, without
immortality, without an individuality of man, without historical
faith--it may be a very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no
Christianity at all” (Niebuhr).

[216] Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, Act III., scene ii.

[217] [_The program you use to display the Arabic may reverse the word
order. Reading right to left, the first word is_ الفقر.--_Transcriber_.]

[218] “I think,” said Captain Wyatt, “the Red Indians die better than
white men; perhaps from having less fear about the future.” An acute
conjecture!

[219] Some geographers identify Massa, the town and castle of the
seventh son of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 14), with Mecca.

[220] Muhammad probably little thought how much more directly this
charge was to be brought against his own revelations. The Ayát, or
inspired versets, were jotted down without order or time in the Musnad
character, which admitted no “vowel points,” upon palm leaves, shoulder
blades of sheep, and similar wild substitutes for paper. In this state
they were cast into a box, and consigned to the keeping of Hafsah, one
of the “Mothers of the Muslims.” After the Prophet’s death they were
drawn from their concealment in a state of disorder, which explains
their present confusion. An edition of the Ayát was first published by
Abubekr, who called it the Koran, or “What shall be read.” This work
was full of errors. The second issue was from the hands of Usman, one
of whose modern titles is “Scribe of the Koran.” His subjects, however,
put him to death, though he had surrounded himself with a rampart
of sacred writings, for his impiety in meddling with inspiration.
Finally, Ali the Khalif, who was more of a scholar than most Arabs,
who wrote poetry, indited proverbs, and according to some improved the
syllabarium by the invention of vowel points, recalled all others,
and issued his own. The Shiah schism to the present day declare that
a whole Juz, or section, of which the Koran now contains thirty, was
omitted and destroyed by the Khalifs hostile to Ali as it was in his
praise. Some passages from the lost revelation are actually quoted in
their theological works. It is true that nothing in the sacred writings
of the Muslims, not a jot or tittle, can be altered, added, or omitted.
Like the Jews, they have numbered and recorded every letter and vowel
point. Unfortunately they have taken this wise step too late; as the
Eastern proverb is, they have looked to halter and heel-ropes after the
horse is stolen.

[221] [In his _City of the Saints_, written after his visit to Salt
Lake City, and published in 1861, Burton takes a different view of
Mormonism.]



INDEX

N.B.--Numbers printed in italics refer to the footnotes.


  Abbott, William, 18.

  Abyssinians, the, 321.

  _Academy_, Burton’s letter to the, 136-143.

  _Academy_, Bataillard’s letter to the, 144-166.

  Africa, the Gypsies of, 233-262.

  Algeria, the Gypsies of, 258-261.

  America, the Gypsies in, 282-285.

  Arabshah, 190.

  Armenians, the, 321.

  Arnim, Count, 17.

  _Arubim_, _79_.

  Arya, 180.

  Ascheri, 110.

  Ascoli, 180.

  Ashkenazím, the, 46-56.

  Asia, the Gypsies in, 211-232.

  Asia Minor, the Gypsies of, 219.

  Aviabron, 18.


  Bactriana, 180.

  Baramaki, the, 231, 236.

  Barbary, 260, 261.

  Bartalus, M., 174-176.

  Basnage, 15.

  Bataillard, Paul, letter to the _Academy_, 144-156;
    _list of works by_, _157_, _158_;
    claim to priority in discovering identity of Gypsy and Jat
        answered, 164-171;
    his reviews reviewed, 171-201.

  _Bauer_, _17_.

  Bavaria, 203.

  Bearnary, 17.

  Bedawin, the, 174, 199, 200, 217, 219, 230, _234_, 236, 254.

  Belochis, the, 139, 142, 169, 170.

  Belochistan, the Jats of, 215-217.

  Belochki dialect, the, 142, 166.

  Beni Aros, the, 260.

  Berber (Barbar), 181.

  Berbruger, M., 198.

  Beth Yusuf, 111.

  Black Jews, the, 58.

  Bocthor, Ellious, 146, 149.

  Borrow, George (quoted), _158_, _161_, 163, 165, _169_, _170_, 190,
      192, _241_, 260, 261, 269, 281.

  Boudin, Dr., 12.

  Braham, 17.

  Brazil, 282-285.

  Brosset, 185.

  Bunyan, John, supposed to be of Gypsy descent, 163.

  Burnouf, Émile, 188.


  Cairo, 238, 240.

  Cantemir, Count, 17.

  Caraïtes, the. _See_ Karaïtes.

  Chinganeh, 134, 219, 220.

  Ciga, 190.

  Cingani, 181.

  Cohen, M. J., 92 ff.

  Cordova, Francisca de, _203_, 270, 271.

  Crosse, A. F., _264_, 267.

  Cushite theory, the, 155.


  Damascus, 231, 232.

  Darfur, 239.

  Das, 182.

  Davis, Dr. J. B., 143.

  Denman, Major, 262.

  Denmark, the Gypsy in, 203, 209.

  Derush, 97.

  “Diním,” the, 111.

  Djat, the, 141, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 165, 183, 195.

  Doba, Capt. S. de, 268.

  Dunsterville, Col., 214.


  Eben ha-Azar, 111.

  Ebionites, the, 54.

  Egypt, the Gypsy in, 233-257.

  Egyptian religion, the, 296, 297, 298, 300, 320.

  El Islam, 216, 218, 255, 321-346;
    popular errors concerning, 322-334.

  England, Gypsy in, 208.

  Essene School, the, 319.

  Europe, Gypsy of, 202-210, 263-281.

  _Excommunication, Jewish forms of_, _82_.


  Fagnan, M., 188, 195.

  Falashas, the, 116.

  Ferdoussy, 145, 148.

  Fetissism, 291, 292, 293, 296, 301, 302.

  Fez, 260.

  Fleischer, Prof., 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 165, 184.

  France, the Gypsy in, 203, 204, 209, 265, 269.

  Frascator, 13.


  Gavbar, the, 218.

  Gemara, the, 100, 101, 102, 103.

  Getæ, the, 134, 141, 150, 165, 216.

  Ghagar, the, 198, 200, 233-257.

  Ghawázi, the, 236, 237, 252.

  Gházieh, the, 181.

  Gill’s _Notices of the Jews_, 3.

  Goeje, Prof. de, 136, 144, 150, 151, 152, 153, 165, 183, 188, 191,
      192, 195, 196.

  Goldsmids, the, 18.

  Gondomar, 18.

  Goths, the, 134, 141.

  Grellman, 202, _241_.

  Greece, 177, 182, 299.

  Grisi, 17.

  Gypsy, the, of Africa, 233-262;
    of Algeria, 258-261;
    of America, 282-285;
    of Asia, 211-232;
    of Barbary, 260, 261;
    of Bavaria, 203;
    of Belochistan, 215-217;
    of Brazil, 282-285;
    compared with the Jat, 133, 134, 137, 139 ff;
    compared with the Jew, 5, _17_, 161, 162;
    of Damascus, 231, 232;
    of Denmark, 203, 209;
    dress of, 277;
    of Egypt, 233-257;
    of England, 208;
    of Europe, 202-210, 263-281;
    famous Gypsies, 163;
    of France, 203, 204, 209, 265, 269;
    of Germany, 203-208;
    of Hungary, 202, 263-269;
    Indian affinities of, 136-143;
    of Italy, 205, 206, 265;
    language of, 134, 240, 279, 280;
    of Morocco, 258-261;
    of the Netherlands, 209;
    of the Panjab, 211-215;
    of Persia, 217-219;
    of Rome, 206;
    of Said, 237;
    of Spain, 203, 207, 265, 269-281;
    of Sweden, 203, 209;
    of Switzerland, 203;
    of Syria, 219-224.


  _Ha-fraká fast_, _10_.

  Hagadah, the, 98.

  Halakah, the, 98.

  Halevi, 18.

  Hamza Ispahani, 146, 148, 150, 151.

  Hasse, hypothesis of, 179, 185.

  Hawi, the, 234, 235.

  Heine, 17.

  Helebis, the, 250, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257.

  Herklots, Dr., 258.

  _Hermann_, _17_.

  Hillel, 101.

  Horus, 297.

  Hoshen Mishpat, 111.

  Hughes, A. W., 215.

  Hungary, 202, 263-269.


  India, 296, 297, 298, 303.

  Indian mythology, 297.

  Irby, O. P., 22.

  Ishaz al Fasi, Rabbi, 110.

  Isis, 296.

  Islam. _See_ El Islam.

  Ispahani, Hamza. _See_ Hamza.

  Italy, 205, 206, 265.


  Játaki language, the, 137-140, 180, 215.

  Jats, the. _See_ Gypsy.

  _Jerusalem, population of_, _68_.

  Jesus, 313-316.

  Jews, the, acclimatization, 13;
    atrocities among, 115-129;
    cause of vitality, 9, 10;
    compared with Gypsy, 5, _17_, 161, 162;
    consanguinity, 7;
    cupidity, 18, 26, 27, 28;
    fecundity, 5;
    future prospects, 62-71;
    general character of, 20-45;
    illustrious, 17;
    immorality, 8;
    of the Holy Land, 46-62;
    longevity, 14;
    mental characteristics of, 6, 7;
    mutable character and physique of, 6;
    physical appearance of the Eastern, 59;
    physique of, 6, 7;
    _population_, _25_;
    vitality, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13.

  Jin-tchi, the, 134, 142.

  “Jore Déah,” 111, 113.

  Joseph Karo, Rabbi, 111.

  Judophobic opinion of the Jew, 62, 63.

  _Jurisdiction, Jewish_, _90_.


  Kamûz, the, 146, 148, 151, 165.

  Kaoli, the, 218.

  Karaïtes, the, 56, 57.

  Khabad, the, 54, 55.

  Khasidím, the, 53, 54, 55.

  Koran, the, 324, 340, 341.

  Kremer, Von (quoted), _199_, 234-250, 252.

  Kurbat, the, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 250, 256.

  Kurbat words, vocabulary of, 224-228.

  Kushite theory, 194, 195.


  Lane, _234_, 258.

  Lemnos, 184.

  “Liberal” opinion of Jewish future, 62.

  Luri, the, 145, 146, 165.


  Macaulay, Lord, speech of, 18, 19.

  MacGregor’s _Rob Roy on the Jordan_, 31.

  Mackenzie, G. Muir, 22.

  Maghribí, the, 239.

  Maimonides, 110.

  Massena, 17.

  Massorah, the, 97.

  McCaul, Dr. Alexander, _37_, _75_, _85_, 88.

  Mendelssohn, 17.

  Mendizelal, Señor, 17.

  Metempsychosis, 295.

  Meyerbeer, 17.

  Mezzofanti, 269.

  Midrash, the, 96.

  Miklosich, 156, 177, 178, 179.

  Mills’ _British Jew_, 37.

  Mishnah, the, 96-106.

  _Montefiore, Sir Moses_, _32_, _33_.

  _Mormons, the_, _97_.

  Morocco, 258-261.

  Moses, 302-313.

  Moses of Cordova, 112.

  Moses of Trani, 111.

  Movers, 194.

  Muhammad, attempt to poison, 33, 116;
    life of, 334-337.


  Nat'h, the, 143.

  Nawar, the, 220, 228, 230, 231, 250, 257.

  Neander, Prof., 17.

  Netherlands, the, 209.

  Neufville, De, 14.

  Newbold, Capt., 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, _238_, _239_, _240_,
      _242_, _243_, _247_, 250, 251, 252, 253, 256.

  _Noachidæ, the_, _79_, _80_.

  Noachidæ, code of the, 78, 79.

  Nott’s _Physical History of the Jewish Race_, 3.


  Offenbach, 17.

  Orach Chaüin, 111.

  Oral law, Jewish, 72-92, 99, 102, 117.

  Osiris, 296.


  Palestine, 219.

  _Palgrave_, _17_.

  Panjab, 137, 139, 140, 141, 168, 211-215.

  Pantheism, 295, 298.

  Parushím, the, 53, 55.

  Paspati, A. G., _160_, 173, 174, 178, 182, 185, 191.

  Pasquier, 269.

  Pasta, 17.

  Paul, 317, 318.

  Perier, 159.

  Persia, 217-219.

  Persians, religion of the ancient, 294, 295, 297.

  Peshat, the, 97.

  Physician, the Jewish, 113, 114.

  _Pococke, Bishop_, _219_.

  Polytheism, 295.

  _Postans Capt._, _167_.

  Pott, Prof., 136, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 154, 165, 181.

  _Proselytes, Jewish_, _79_.


  Quasimus, 114.


  Rabanu Jacob Be-Rab, 110, 111, 113.

  Rabbinical law, 72-114.

  Rachel, 17.

  Rasscho, Shaykh, 220, 222.

  _Ratisbonne, De_, _17_.

  “Reformed British Jews,” the, 58.

  Reinaud, 147, 149, 150, 151, 165.

  Religion, earliest forms of, 289-302.

  Remiz, the, 97.

  Ricardos, the, 18.

  _Roberts, Samuel_, _276_.

  Rödiger, 150.

  Rogers, Consul E. T., 231, 232.

  Romá, the, 160, 164, 172, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 186, 187,
      198, 202, 221, 228, 233, 252, 261.

  Roman Catholic view of Jewish future, 62, 63.

  Romani-chíb, 181, 197.

  Rome, 206.

  Rossini, 17.

  Rothschilds, the, 18.

  Rouhers, the, 18.

  Rumeli, 220.

  Russia and the Holy Land, 66, 67, 70.


  Sabbath, the Jewish, 74-77, 86.

  _Sabbath Services, the Jewish_, _76_.

  Sadík, 11.

  Safed, School of, 68, 92, 106-114.

  Said, 251.

  Saint-Martin, V. de, 185.

  Samaritans, the, 57, 58.

  Sanhedrin, the, 94, 95, 96.

  Santa, Dr. de Pietra, 258-260.

  Saracens, 203, 205.

  Scotland, 172, 178, 213, 282.

  Segor, 181.

  Sephardím, the, 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 56.

  Shahnameh, the, 146, 148, 150, 165.

  Shalomon Alkabez, Rabbi, 111.

  Shammai, 101.

  Sicani, the, 180, 185.

  Sidi Hamed au Muza, 260.

  Siginnoi, the, 185.

  Sím, El, 240, 241.

  Sindh, 138, 139.

  Singani, 181.

  Sinties, the, 184, 185.

  Sleeman, W. H., 141, 165, 211, 231.

  Sochæus, 11.

  Sod, 98.

  Soult, Marshal, 17.

  Spain, 178.

  Spinoza, 17, _70_, _95_.

  Sweden, 203, 209.

  Syria, 219-224, 228-232, 250, 320.


  Talmud Babli, 101, 102.

  Talmudic law, 72-114, 118.

  Tchangar, the, 156.

  Theism, 302.

  Tiberias, School of, 92-106.

  Ticknor, 271.

  Torlonias, the, 18.

  Trumpp, Dr. Ernest, 137, 156, _168_, 197.

  Tschudi, 13.

  Tsigans, the, 147, 152, 153, 175, 183, 185, 189, 190, 193, 198, 201,
      263 ff.


  Ukayl, 137.


  “White Jews,” the, 58.

  Wohl, 17.

  _Wolff_, _17_.


  Xapol, 18.


  Yad ha-Hazaka, 110.

  Yahuda, Rabbi, 94, 95.

  _Yom ha-Kippur_, _65_.


  Zengi, the, 150.

  Zigeuner, the, 150, 151, 165, 192, 219, 234, _241_, 268.

  Zincali, the, 187, 192, 219.

  Zingaro, derivation of, 190.

  Zuth, the, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 165, 231, _239_.


                              PRINTED BY
                    HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.,
                         LONDON AND AYLESBURY.



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Archaic, obsolete and inconsistent spellings are maintained from the
original book. There were no obvious misspellings. No changes were made
to the text with the following exceptions:

  --some footnotes inserted to comment about transliterations,

  --for words in the Arabic alphabet (including Arabic, Persian,
    Sindhi, etc.) or Devangari (Sanskrit, Hindi, etc.), I have included
    a transliteration if one was not already in the text,

  --all footnotes moved to the end of their chapter,

  --CONTENTS, PREFACE, INDEX, and TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE added to the Table
    of Contents, and

  --added this note.





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