This, like all unfounded opinions, of
course originated in ignorance, which is always ready to have
recourse to conjecture and guesswork, in preference to travelling
through the long, mountainous, and stony road of patient
investigation; it is, however, an error far more absurd and more
destitute of tenable grounds than the ancient belief that the
Gitanos were Egyptians, which they themselves have always professed
to be, and which the original written documents which they brought
with them on their first arrival in Western Europe, and which bore
the signature of the king of Bohemia, expressly stated them to be.
The only clue to arrive at any certainty respecting their origin,
is the language which they still speak amongst themselves; but
before we can avail ourselves of the evidence of this language, it
will be necessary to make a few remarks respecting the principal
languages and dialects of that immense tract of country, peopled by
at least eighty millions of human beings, generally known by the
name of Hindustan, two Persian words tantamount to the land of Ind,
or, the land watered by the river Indus.
The most celebrated of these languages is the Sanskrida, or, as it
is known in Europe, the Sanscrit, which is the language of religion
of all those nations amongst whom the faith of Brahma has been
adopted; but though the language of religion, by which we mean the
tongue in which the religious books of the Brahmanic sect were
originally written and are still preserved, it has long since
ceased to be a spoken language; indeed, history is silent as to any
period when it was a language in common use amongst any of the
various tribes of the Hindus; its knowledge, as far as reading and
writing it went, having been entirely confined to the priests of
Brahma, or Brahmans, until within the last half-century, when the
British, having subjugated the whole of Hindustan, caused it to be
openly taught in the colleges which they established for the
instruction of their youth in the languages of the country.
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