If people, in reflecting on the emigration of the Gipseys, are not determined to imagine that they were actuated by a blind impulse, to break up at once, and quit their native country; no cause can be assigned for their retreat from thence so plausible as the war of Timur Beg in India. The date of their arrival marks it very plainly. It was in the years 1408 and 1409 that this conqueror ravaged India; and having persuaded himself, as well as his followers, that he had undertaken the expedition against India for the purpose of disseminating the Mahometan religion, his war was oppressive enough to occasion such an emigration. Not only every one who made any resistance was destroyed, and such as fell into the enemy’s hands, though quite defenceless, were made slaves, but in a short time these very slaves, to the number of a hundred thousand, were put to death. As in consequence an universal panic took place, nobody being secure that it might not be his own fate in a short time, what could be more natural than that a great number of terrified inhabitants should endeavour to save themselves by flight?
An objection naturally occurs, that when this supposed flight took place, had it been true, not Gipseys only, or the lowest class of people, but with them all sorts of Indians, of superior rank, would have come among us. But this argument will fall of itself, when we reflect on the prepossession which the three higher castes of Indians entertain for their country. They ascribe an extraordinary degree of holiness to it, and believe it to be the only country thought, by the Creator of the universe, worthy for such sanctified people as the Bramins, Tschechteries, and Beis, to dwell in. They would rather suffer torture and death, than quit this land, chosen by the Almighty himself for their residence, to go and dwell any-where else. Moreover a Suder is, in their estimation, the most execrable being in the world; and the least intercourse with him would be defiling and degrading their high characters, which, to them, would be more dreadful than death. Wherefore it was a moral impossibility for those of a higher caste to have any thing in common with a Suder, or that they should have made an united retreat. Finally, by putting themselves into the power of the Suders, with whom they live constantly in a state of discord and inveteracy, they would have hazarded a greater danger, than by patiently risking their fate from the hands of their common enemy. If any of the higher ranks of Indians did withdraw themselves, on account of the troubles, it is probable they retired southwards, to people of their own sort, the Mahrattas.