History Of The Roma

The Romani people, also referred to as Roma, Sinti or Kale, depending on the sub-group, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group which primarily lives in Europe. The Romani may have migrated from what is the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BCE. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about 500 CE. It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire. The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. 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.

Origin

There are many different theories about their origin, as example, including that the Roma and Sinti people came from Sindh.

The Romani have been described by Diana Muir Appelbaum as unique among peoples because they have never identified themselves with a territory; they have no tradition of an ancient and distant homeland from which their ancestors migrated, nor do they claim the right to national sovereignty in any of the lands where they reside. Rather, Romani identity is bound up with the ideal of freedom expressed, in part, in having no ties to a homeland. The absence of a written history has meant that the origin and early history of the Romani people was long an enigma. Indian origin was suggested on linguistic grounds as early as the late 18th century.

In the Roma language Rom means Husband, while Romliye means Housewife, "Roma" means "Human being". Theories suggest that the ancestors of the Romani were part of the military in Northern India. One modern theory is, when there were invasions by Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi and these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire between AD 1000 and 1030.

The genetic evidence identified an Indian origin for Roma. Genetic evidence connects the Romani people to the descendants who emigrated from South Asia towards Central Asia during the medieval period.

Linguistic origins

Until the mid-to-late 18th century, theories about the origin of the Romani were mostly speculative. In 1782, Johann Christian Christoph Rüdiger published his research findings in which he pointed out the relationship between the Romani language and Hindustani. Subsequent work supported the hypothesis that Romani shared a common origin with the Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India.

Domari and Romani languages

Domari was once thought to be the "sister language" of Romani, the two languages had split after the Romani departed from South Asia, but based on more recent research findings, they should be considered two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) Saraiki language group of languages because the differences which exist between them are extremely significant. Therefore, the Dom and the Rom are probably the descendants of two different groups of people who migrated from the Indian subcontinent in two different waves, the waves of migration occurred several centuries apart.

Genetic evidence

Further evidence for the South Asian origin of the Romanies came in the late 1990s. Researchers doing DNA analysis discovered that Romani populations carried large frequencies of particular Y chromosomes (inherited paternally) and mitochondrial DNA (inherited maternally) that otherwise exist only in populations from South Asia.

47.3% of Romani men carry Y chromosomes of haplogroup H-M82 which is rare outside South Asia. Mitochondrial haplogroup M, most common in Indian subjects and rare outside Southern Asia, accounts for nearly 30% of Romani people. A more detailed study of Polish Roma shows this to be of the M5 lineage, which is specific to India. Moreover, a form of the inherited disorder congenital myasthenia is found in Romani subjects. This form of the disorder, caused by the 1267delG mutation, is otherwise known only in subjects of Indian ancestry. This is considered to be the best evidence of the Indian ancestry of the Romanis.

The Romanis have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations". The number of common Mendelian disorders found among Romanis from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect".

A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group". Also the study pointed out that " genetic drift and different levels and sources of admixture, appear to have played a role in the subsequent differentiation of populations". The same study found that "a single lineage ... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males."

A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romanies are descended from "a founder population of common origins that has subsequently split into multiple socially divergent and geographically dispersed Romani
groups". The same study revealed that this population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".

There is genetic evidence of major mixing with Balkan peoples during the time of the Ottoman Empire.

Connection to the Burushos and Pamiris

The Burushos of Hunza have a paternal lineage genetic marker that is grouped with Pamiri speakers from Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and the Sinti ethnic group. This find of shared genetic haplogroups may indicate an origin of the Romani people in or around these regions.

Possible connection to the Domba people

According to a genetic study on the phylogeography of Y-chromosome haplogroup H1a1a-M82 in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.

Mitochondrial or Y-chromosome haplotype studies provide valuable information, but a limitation of these types of studies is that they each represent only one instantiation of the genealogical process. Autosomal data permits simultaneous analysis of multiple lineages, which can provide novel information about population history. According to a genetic study on autosomal data on Roma the source of South Asian Ancestry in Roma is North-West India. The two populations showing closest relatedness to Roma were Punjabis and Kashmiris which also happen to have the highest West Eurasian related ancestry amongst South Asians. 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. The classical and mtDNA genetic markers suggested the closest affinity of the Roma with domba origin and Punjabi populations from Rajasthan and the Punjab respectively.

Early records

Early records of itinerant populations from India begin as early as the Sassanid period. British linguist Donald Kenrick notes the first recorded presence of '' Zott'' in Baghdad in AD 420, Khanaqin in AD 834.

Contemporary scholars have suggested one of the first written references to the Romanies, under the term ''" Atsingani"'', (derived from the Greek ''ἀτσίγγανοι - atsinganoi''), dates from the Byzantine era during a time of famine in the 9th century. In the year AD 800, Saint Athanasia gave food to "foreigners called the Atsingani" near Thrace. Later, in AD 803, Theophanes the Confessor wrote that Emperor Nikephoros I had the help of the ''"Atsingani"'' to put down a riot with their "knowledge of magic". However, the Atsingani were a Manichean sect that disappeared from chronicles in the 11th century. ''"Atsinganoi"'' was used to refer to itinerant fortune tellers, ventriloquists and wizards who visited the Emperor Constantine IX in the year 1054.

The hagiographical text, ''The Life of St. George the Anchorite,'' mentions that the ''"Atsingani"'' were called on by Constantine to help rid his forests of the wild animals which were killing off his livestock.

Roma skeletal remains exhumed from Castle Mall at Norwich, UK were radiocarbon dated by liquid scintillation spectrometry to circa 930-1050AD.

Arrival in Europe

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