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Evangelinos Sophocles, from Thessaly, who came last, has long held the honorable position of a Professor in Harvard University. Four others, Anastatius Karavelles, Nicholas Petrokokino, Alexander G. Paspati, and Gregory Perdicaris, were useful to the mission at different times after their return to the East.
Had Dr Pott or Dr Paspati had recourse to the plan which I adopted of reading a copious Hindustani dictionary entirely through, word by word, to a patient Gipsy, noting down all which he recognised, and his renderings of them, it is very possible that these learned men would in Germany and Turkey have collected a mass of overwhelming proof as to the Indian origin of Rommany.
I cannot form any direct connection between this word and any in English Gipsy, but it is curious that in Turkish Gipsy Tasi is a cup, and in Turkish Persian it means, according to Paspati, a copper basin used in the baths.
LUSHY, to be tipsy, and LUSH, are attributed for their origin to the name of Lushington, a once well-known London brewer, but when we find Losho and Loshano in a Gipsy dialect, meaning jolly, from such a Sanskrit root as Lush; as Paspati derives it, there seems to be some ground for supposing the words to be purely Rommany.
A high school for the Armenians was opened at Pera in October, 1834, under the superintendence of Mr. Paspati, a native of Scio, who had been educated in America, and was regarded as well fitted for the post. The next year, however, he went to Paris to study medicine, and Hohannes was appointed his successor. The school had its full number of scholars, which was thirty.
Indeed, as I looked in the Gipsy's face, I began to realise that a man might be talked out of a belief in his own name, and felt a rudimentary sensation to the effect that the language of the Black Wanderers was all a dream, and Pott's Zigeuner the mere tinkling of a pot of brass, Paspati a jingling Turkish symbol, and all Rommany a praeterea nihil without the vox.
Had my friend used the works of Pott or Paspati, Ascoli or Grellman, he would have found it an easy thing to translate this advertisement. The truth simply is, that for scholars there is not a single secret or hidden word in English Gipsy or in any other Rommany dialect, and none except scholars will take pains to acquire it.
The reviewer pays a somewhat grudging tribute to other portions of the book, the accounts of the Gypsyries and the biographical particulars of the Romany worthies, but the work suffers by comparison with those of Paspati and Leland. He acknowledges that Borrow was one of the pioneers of those who gave accounts of the Gypsies in English, who gave to many their present taste for Gypsy matters,
On doit saisir le mot echappe au Nomade, et ne pas l'obliger a le repeter, car il le changera selon so, facon, says Paspati. Unused to abstract efforts of memory, all that he can retain is the sense of his last remark, and very often this is changed with the fleeting second by some associated thought, which materially modifies it.
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