History of the Romani people
This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers.
The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.
One modern theory states that during the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni, defeated soldiers were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire, between AD 1000 and 1030.
[15][10] The following table presents the numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with the corresponding terms in Sanskrit, Hindi, Odia, and Sinhala to demonstrate the similarities.
[21] The study also points out that "genetic drift and different levels and sources of admixture, appear to have played a role in the subsequent differentiation of populations".
According to a genetic study on autosomal data, the two populations showing closest relatedness to Roma were Punjabis and Kashmiris, who also happen to have the highest West Eurasian-related ancestry among South Asians.
[25] However, according to a study on genome-wide data published in 2019, the putative origin of the proto-Roma involves a Punjabi group with low levels of West Eurasian ancestry.
[26] The classical and mtDNA genetic markers suggested the closest affinity of the Roma with Rajput and Punjabi populations from northwestern India.
[28] Contemporary scholars have suggested one of the first written references to the Romanis, under the term Atsingani, (derived from the Greek ἀτσίγγανοι – atsinganoi), dates from the Byzantine era during a time of famine in the 9th century.
[29] Roma skeletal remains exhumed from Castle Mall in Norwich, UK, have been radiocarbon-dated by liquid scintillation spectrometry to circa 930–1050AD.
[30] Gilbert White's The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne records a report from John Bell[31] of "Gypsies" travelling from Tartary towards China in the early 18th century.
[28] (although DNA evidence from mid-11th century skeletons in Norwich suggest that at least a few individuals may have arrived earlier, perhaps due to Viking enslavement of Romani from the eastern Mediterranean, or liaisons with the Varangians[40]).
[42] Romanis began immigrating to the United States in colonial times, with small groups in Virginia and French Louisiana.
[44] According to historian Norman Davies, a 1378 law passed by the governor of Nauplion in the Greek Peloponnese, confirming privileges for the "atsingani", is "the first documented record of Romany Gypsies in Europe".
Similar documents, again representing the Romanis as a group that had been exiled from Egypt, record them reaching Braşov, Transylvania, in 1416; Hamburg, Holy Roman Empire, in 1418; and Paris in 1427.
Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire in 1417.
[28] Romanis were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Aragon in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536.
Similar legislation was passed in numerous European nations, including Denmark in 1589, Sweden in 1637, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanis to its colonies in 1538.
Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanis "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs) but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital.
The government built permanent huts to replace mobile tents, forbade travel, and forcefully removed children from their parents to be fostered by non-Romani.
The massive killing spree that resulted prompted the government to eventually step in and "forbid the drowning of Romani women and children".
[50] In 1721, Charles VI, Joseph's brother and successor, amended the decree to include the execution of adult female Romani, while children were "to be put in hospitals for education".
The Romengiro Lav ("Romani word") writer's circle encouraged works by authors like Nikolay Aleksandrovich Pankov and Nina Dudarova.
In Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of Romanis from Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania were re-settled in the border areas of the Czech lands, and their nomadic lifestyle was forbidden.
In Czechoslovakia, where they were considered a "socially degraded stratum", Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population.
This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats to withhold future social welfare payments, misinformation, and involuntary sterilization.
[59] Romani people began immigrating to the United States during colonial times, with small groups settling in Virginia and French Louisiana.
The following week, the Canadian embassy in Prague received hundreds of calls from Romanis every day, and flights between Czechia and Canada were sold out until October.
[64] Lucie Čermáková, a spokesperson at the Canadian embassy in Prague, criticized the program, claiming that it "presented only one side of the matter and picked out only nonsensical ideas".
"[62] Up to that point, the movement of Romanis to Canada had been fairly easy, because visa requirements for Czech citizens had been lifted by the Canadian government in April 1996.
