Romani Origins

A few years back I logged onto my computer and decided I was gonna make a concerted effort to figure out just where we came from. To my surprise there were a large number of opinions out there. I, kind of, thought there would be some sort of consensus, and maybe there is and I just don't know about it. But, after taking a couple of days going over all the opinions and doing a little tracking of my own, I felt, as though, I could say with some degree of confidence we came from a region of Northern India called Punjab.

Punjab (highlighted in red) is in Northern India. To it's north and west is Pakistan (highlighted in blue).. To the north and west of Pakistan is Afghanistan (hightlighted in green). Bordering both Pakistan and Afghanistan to the west is Iran (not shown).

After tracing the Romani tracks back to Punjab, I figured I'd find as much out about the Punjabi culture as I could over the computer and was startled. I found this Punjabi website called Punjab Online, which had a lot of interesting information on it. But, it was their page on Punjabi words that captured my most curious attention. I found a whole bevy of words that were either identical or very similar to the words we English Romanichal use everyday. I'm going to save the actual comparisons for another post, which I will get out as soon as possible, but if you're interested, go check that site out.

I found out that in the year 1001 a sultan by the name of Mahmud of Ghazni, or simply Mahmud Ghazni, invaded and conquered the Punjab region. He actually annexed a portion, which is still part of Pakistan to this day. For a quarter century, Ghazni continued to lead raids into Northern India, plundering their wealthy temples along the way.

Ghazni, throughout the period of his invasions, enslaved enormous numbers of Punjabi. In my research I came across numbers no lower than 50,000 and as high as 5,000,000 Punjabi enslaved. Enslaving this great number of people was a three-fold strategy on Ghazni's part.

First, Ghazni was building an empire in the region now known as Afghanistan and he needed slaves for manual labor. Secondly, slaves were another form of wealth at this time and could be sold to fill the coffers and pay for his prime target of invasion to the west, which is now Iran. Thirdly, slaves could be made to fight with Ghazni's army against the lands to the west.

So, Ghazni's excursions into India were paying off in a big way. He was gaining enormous amounts of wealth from the treasure-filled temples and enslaving a vast number of people later to be sold, used for labor or to fight in his army. Also, he had captured the Hindu ruler of the area, at the time, named Jaipal. He used the capture of Jaipal to demean and gain more wealth by ransoming him back to his family.

With this great number of enslaved Punjabi carried off back into the region which is now Afghanistan, it was said there were more Hindu in the area than even Ghazni's own people.

At some point, in the history of these captured slaves, there either had to be a mass escape or a revolt. Either way, these, now, liberated slaves, made up of every caste of Punjabi society, including artisans, warriors, farmers and temple priests among other occupations, social groups and religions began migrating west into Central and Eastern Europe.

These people never forgot the man who enslaved them, though. The name Ghazni lives on in their everyday language to this day. We'll get to that later.

Along their journey, you can be sure, some would put down their tent pegs and call it home. Some even migrated down into Iran, Iraq and Palestine.

Another thing you can be sure of is, over the centuries to come, their language was interspersed with local language in order to try and fit in as best as possible. Being unwanted most everywhere they went was the most likely reason for such a wide disbursement of these liberated slaves, now known as Gypsies or Rom or Romany or Roma or Romani or whatever else you'd like to call us.

Speaking of the word Gypsy, I'd like to address the origins of that term. I came across a very likely explanation for how we ended up being called Gypsies. I know pretty much everyone thinks that the word was given to us, as a moniker, because people thought we were from Egypt. Thus, the three middle letters in Egypt were used to form Gypsy. But, the explanation I came across seems just as, if not more, likely.

When locals would ask, along the Romani's migration, where they came from, these wandering groups would say "Punjab-say". Now, what you first must understand is that wherever they would go there was always a language barrier that had to, somehow, be conquered. So, I'm sure when these locals were asking these people their place of origin a lot of hand and arm gesturing was taking place. Room for misinterpretation was undeniable.

Back to Punjab-say. "Say" what? The theory is "-say" was like a geographical suffix. Much like the rest of the world has with terms such as -burg, -ton. -town, -shire, -ham, etc... Thus, the suffix "-say" was completely appropriate for them to add on when trying to explain where they came from.

The other theory is the suffix "-say" was given when asked "What race of people?" they were. In other words, just like the suffixes of -ans, -ese, -ians, -ish, -ites, etc...

So, "What race of people are you?" or "Where do you come from?" was answered with the word "Punjab-say". In time, Punjab-say became just Jabsay, which sounded an awful lot like Gypsy. And being that GYPsy has similarities to EGYPtian, a connection was made and some people, still to this day, think Gypsies come from Egypt.

Anyhow, I've made this post entirely too long and can only hope someone would actually read all the way down here to see what I'm typing right now. If you have weathered the confusing and jumbled writing and thoughts, CONGRATULATIONS!!! You have the patience of Job.

Oh yeah, wait! I almost forgot. About Ghazni living on in our language to this day? Well Mahmud Ghazni was, of course, hated among the Gypsies. So they turned his name into a derogatory term. Ghazni became Ghadji and Ghadji became Gadji (plural) or Gadja (singular).

Today the term Gadji is almost exclusively used to identify a person who is a non-Gypsy. But, I can recall plenty of times the word was used with disdain and disgust to demean someone. Not that we have been harboring any bad feelings for over a thousand years or anything........Ha ha.

Thanks for having an interest and reading. I will be getting out that Punjab word list of similarities to our words as soon as possible. It's really pretty fascinating and I believe is proof positive of our Punjabi origins.

Below are a list of websites I found relevant to the subject discussed. Thanks again and take care.

Punjab Online

Bury Me Standing

Mahmud Ghazni

Mahmud Ghazni Wiki

Map of the Middle East

I'll be typin' at ya later,

Bob the Blogger