Romany

An interesting web page:

http://romani.org/toronto/diaspora_rl.html

It says, with some considerable coherence, that the route of the Roma (Gypsies) was over the Mountains to Central Asia and then along the Silk Road into the Caucusus, Armenia, thence westward into Anatolia and Byzantium:

all Romani dialects spoken today from Wales in Britain to Siberia contain these same loan words from Dardic, Persian. Armenian, Byzantine Greek, Old Slavic and Rumanian. Had the exodus from India been through Afghanistan, as European scholars still maintain, Romani would have loan words from Pushtu and the other languages spoken there and could not have picked up the Dardic words and grammatical elements from the Upper Indus Valley.

The word 'Roma' is said to be descended from Dom, Domba, a caste name.

Other sites seem to follow a different theory on how the Roma entered Europe, having them avoid Central Asia altogether. Still, a reversal of the Indic migration makes for interesting reading.

Mark.