Gypsies. Origin and culture

The unique combination of socio-antropological, linguo-antropological approaches and deep knowledge of Gypsy culture allowed the authors to comprehensively come to unravelling the origin of Gypsies. The collected in the book evidence from historical sources indicates the existence in ancient times at the border between modern India and Pakistan of a state whose name comes from the ancient ethnonym preserved in the name of contemporary Gypsies: “Rom” or “Dom” ... The material presented in the second part of the book tells about the organization of the Roma community and the Indian east origins of the oldest traditions in the culture of the Gypsies: Roma court, the perceptions of desecration and ritual purity, the traditional crafts, the ancient eastern origins of the Gypsy musical creativity, and much more. The publication is prepared by the staff of the Laboratory for Roma (Gypsy) Culture at the Federal Institute for Educational Development of the Russian federation under the editorship of a specialist-indologist from the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography “Peter the Great” at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera).