By: Vasile Burtea, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection
Source: European Centre of Studies in Ethnical Problems and Social Communication;
Training Course of Experts in Ethnical Problems and Social Communication
1. BRIEF HISTORY
The lack of "ancient" documents mentioning in one way or another the Romanian Roma population trammels the retracing of life, behaviour and tradition of this people living on this land, as it seems, from the beginning of the second millennium.
A more ample bibliography can be found only around 1848, but the writings before the 19th century are extremely poor.
The Roma are mentioned for the first time only in the year of 1385 in the documents of the local chancellery, namely in an enfeoffment to the Vodita monastery.
Together with the land and outbuildings with which the monasteries were supplied, there were given also "forty gypsy shacks " that undoubtedly constituted an important part of the fortune and inventory ceded to the monastery.
"Amazed by the unusual picturesque of our Gypsies" , the foreign travellers mentioned in their diaries or notes small events with the Gypsies as well. They appear as yet another decor to the crossed land, which they enriched with their "art and picturesque, part of their original character brought from their native country, India".
The specific note of the existing documents is given by the fact that, taken as a whole, these refer to the Roma that were already slaves and had been oppressed. Or, if we take into consideration the historical process of oppression of the Romanian peasants, through their becoming serfs, this does not appear to us suddenly, as a result of a "campaign", on the contrary, it was rather a slow process with turnings and twisting and social distress, that presuppose, first of all, time.
The Roma, not being owners of land (the primary property and means of production of that time), the process took place faster than in the case of the Romanian landowner peasants, but not fast enough to obtain a campaign character.
Departing from this truth we can affirm, without being suspected of going too far, that the existence of the Roma in the Balkans and on the current Romanian territory dates way back before the year of 1385.
Even if we give credit to the variant that the Roma might have made their way into the Romanian Principalities through the North and East of Moldavia (as M. Kogalniceanu, N. Iorga and H. H. Stahl claim) as Tartar servants (thus as oppressed), their penetration - passing from one master to another and crossing the distances as far as the south - around the Tismana monastery where they set up a sum of "shacks" (poorish homes unfit for dwelling), meant already a history passed off in a prolonged time. Considering the technical means and of transport of the period and the dimensions of time of the epoch, the claim of antiquity has a lot more ground.
Moreover, George Potra, commenting on the fact that only after three years from the mentioned document, Mircea cel Batrân (Mircea the Old) had given the monastery of Cozia (in the year of 1388) among many others also "300 gypsy shacks", concludes on his part that "this means that the gypsies were quite numerous and long-established in the principalities".
No matter how abundant the migrating flow might have been, we do not believe that it could have been possible for so many people to be concentrated around a single property (in order to be handed over). Such a concentration presupposes a time when the demographic laws (first of all the birth rate) leave their mark through the manifestation of the effects.
On the other hand, the comparative philology "presumes that the date of their appearance in Europe might be the year 1000. And it is possible that this date could involve some truth, since there is no other way to explain the mode they spread so fast in all the countries of Europe".
In fact in the south of the Danube, in the Balkans, on the territory of the Byzantine Empire, the Roma are mentioned in documents as early as years of 1000-1100 A.D.
1.1 ORIGINS
The hypotheses and theories concerning the origins of the Roma constitute in themselves a research subject. Historians, ethnographers, more recently anthropologists and other researchers have made a serious goal in trying to unravel the origins of this "enigmatic people" (A. Russo), "bohemian" (Vaillan), omnipresent in Europe, and many times hard to understand and to explain.
It was believed for a long period of time that the Roma have their origins in Egypt. For this reason the English, and after them others, named them Gypsies, but there were also hypotheses and opinions, which claimed that the Roma had been Persian, Phoenician, Tartars, Turks left after the wars waged on this land.
The "folklore" of the problem comes even to "label" them (mocking allusion to the origin from Egypt), the inhabitants of the antique Rome or of the Roman Empire (from romaios = Roman citizen), and even … ancient inhabitants of Dacia that preserve with unconscious holiness, elements of language, habits, traditions etc. etc.
If most of the writings (in fact descriptions) about the Roma belong to ethnologists or have a declared ethnographic-ethnologic content, still the most credible explanation of the origin and the beginning of the Roma' exodus belongs to the linguists.
Just like the hypothesis of the Roma's ancientry in the European space (spread also by linguists), based on the compared analysis of the language, the conclusion concerning the Roma's origin and the date when their migration started, as well as the Indian area from where the whole migration started, was also founded based on the analysis of certain linguistic units.
The logical procedure started from the explanation of the word gajo, gaje, which means, first of all, enemy or (in a more recent interpretation) stranger (therefore it has nothing in common with the connotation of the Romanian "version" of gagiu (guy) or gagica (babe)).
This word can be found in all the dialects and languages spoken by the Roma all over the world, and indicates the same relationship (being, situation).
Searching for the origin of the word, the researchers have come to the conclusion that it is connected with the existence of Mahmud of Ghazni's (from Ghazna, Ghazny) soldiers, a Muslim leader, being in a continuous campaign of invasion and subjugation of the north-west of India (approximately the state of Punjab, today's Punjabi), the place where it is presumed that the ancestors of the actual Roma lived their life.
He had invaded, around year 1000 A.D., the above mentioned regions several times, and the population, incapable of holding out, was forced to retreat, and eventually, to give in by leaving for good the native lands, and to start off towards other horizons, if not friendly, at least less hostile.
The explanation has the gift to persuade, and this is why we accept and acquire it, specifying one more time that gajo has the meaning of the one from Ghazna (Ghaja), that is, our enemy, or with reference to our enemies.
To this argument of a linguistic-deductive nature others can, by all means,
be added as well with a complementary and supporting role.
The language of the Roma, taken as a whole, comes to complete the argumentation,
being very similar to the language spoken in the present as well by certain
groups that are in contact even today in the Indian regions that we have already
mentioned.
Linguists, the experts in the Romany language agree that, in spite of the dialectisation of this language, it still remains homogeneous, representing an excellent means of communication among the quasi-totality of the Roma in the world. All the linguists affirm that the main stock of the words and the basic linguistic root are of an Indian origin.
The Roma (gypsies) from Western Europe (Germany, Italy, France) are called Manusi or Sinti. The last name (of Sinti) given to the Roma from Italy and Germany comes from the river Sind from India and it indicates the fact that they have remained with the "conscience" of their origin in the regions dominated by this stream of water (the land of Sind).
Similarly, manus, in the Romany language, has the same meaning as the word Roma, both belonging to the same stock of words.
The colour of many of the Roma's skin, the traditional national dress, appear as elements that are strikingly similar to the one of the Indian population, traditional through excellence.
The gesture and movements, centuries after the Europanisation, have not changed compared to that of the Indian population. If we take into consideration the nuptials of the Roma population, which kept the traditions, the national dress, the language and the traditional way of life, we are amazed by the resemblance with the identical phenomena found at the Indian population.
Even in our days, although there is a strict legislation that does not allow the young Indians to marry earlier than at the age of 17 (boys), and respectively 18 (girls), owing to the undesirable rapid growth of the population (India being the second demographic giant of the world), still 10,000 consumed marriages are recorded between children. Or in the case of a considerable part among the Roma (Coppersmith, Platers, Bear-leaders, as well as Through-makers from some regions), the marriages between children represent a normal act, they being "contracted" with the approval and knowledge of the parents.
Similarly, the manner in which the Roma women swaddle and carry their infants is strikingly similar to that of the Indian women.
In what way was it possible to keep so many similarities? The answer cannot
be the subject of these pages, however it is useful to know that in the present
an answer of this sort can be given.
1.2. THE MOTIVES AND PASSAGES OF THE MIGRATION
As we have seen, the migration of the ancestors of the actual Roma departed from India as a result of a military boom completely unfavourable. It is possible that initially they withdrew in order to regain their strength, or to procure enforcement and military or political support, so that they would be able to return and win back the lands they had been forced to leave, and of course, to retrieve their freedom without which life would not have been possible.
It is clear that the fortunes were not on their side, and the desire to return remained, for most of them, only a dream. Defeated, exhausted physically, materially and morally, they still had to find a way out, a way of existing. Naturally, Europe, the Byzantine Empire, Byzantium represented not only well known economical, cultural and political opportunities, but for them at the same time, the chance to survive in a moment when they were in distress. And they made the best of the situation.
Coming to exist, to co-exist, without intentions of conquer and destruction (after all, they came from one of the most profound and well developed cultural centres, where the knowledge of the world had been already accumulated in enormous and acknowledged libraries even from the time, when in other premises people were wandering without any specific goal and with no place to return to), they were used according to the needs and habits of the land that had adopted them, and the adoption took place in proportion of their skills and capacities to meet and adjust to the requirements and necessities of the time and place.
Byzantium did not represent a land that had been devastated by the ancestors of the Roma. They had known it even from ancient times, just like in the case of India, whose extremely developed commerce constituted an essential part of the economy of the Indian states. Even from antiquity, this branch of the Indian economy had all along been in the attention and under the rule of the Indian leaders.
For commerce there existed a whole legislation, protection and control on the part of the state , even from ancient times. No doubt, among the partners of the navigating Indians, there were also Byzantine merchants, whose flourishing commerce, to which other opportunities were added as well, offered by this part of the world, attracted the majority of the ancestors of the actual Roma.
It is said, even in the present, among the Roma people that it was commerce that had brought them to Europe.
We say majority, since not all of them reached Europe and, eventually the Romanian Principalities, on the same route.
The ignorance by the Roma's ancestors of the possibility of several passages in Europe, and implicitly, in the Romanian Principalities, represented a starting point of some interpretations that do not correspond with the truth, or of some explanations (even in what the history of the Roma in the Principalities is concerned), based on unimportant and insignificant aspects, without foundation, in order to constitute the explicative and scientific support of the phenomenon.
We refer, of course, to the statement according to which the Roma in the Principalities (and they constitute the object of the following lines) might have had as entrance-gate the east and north-east of Moldavia, and their social condition might have been as that of servants (term of Slavic origin) or Tartar slaves (term of Latin origin).
This statement, which we do not reject as a whole, was supported by M. Kogalniceanu (the first great expert of the problems and language of our Roma, to whom the Roma owe and attribute their affranchisement from slavery as well) and later on adopted by N. Iorga and the sociologist H. H. Sthal (in his studies on historical sociology).
Our convictions, however, are directed towards the more "sociological" explanation, with a social-economic support that is more solid and logical at the same time, offered by the sociologist Nicolae Gheorghe. Moreover, we attribute total credit to the thesis according to which the ancestors of the Roma penetrated in the space among the Danube, the Black Sea and the Tisza, in their astonishing majority, through the southern part of the territory.
At the same time, we agree with the idea that they found their necessary place and role in the social and economic context of the society they entered by meeting some of the requirements of the majority populations with whom they were in contact, populations we shall now call contact populations.
This fact granted them both in the south-east of Europe and on the territories of the Romanian Principalities a status of economical complementation, meant to augment the picture of the social-economic life satisfying some requirements that had to be fulfilled in the diachrony of the respective society.
The economical complementation represents the status upon which the process of cultural symbiosis was structured - characteristic of what we call the Romany culture - and this was possible through structures and levels, although different, still compatible, through suitable mediums in order to ensure a sort of reciprocity that have stood on the basis of allowance and not passive acceptance, indifferent or unintentional.
The fact that we do not totally support the idea of the penetration of the Roma in the Principalities through the eastern and northern-eastern side of Moldavia (not considering it to correspond with the reality of the concrete-historical course of the phenomenon) we do not want it to suggest that we reject the statement as a whole.
We only sustain that the main decisive migrating tendency took place in the south of the Danube, and the one in the east or north-east was unessential or not definitive. Moreover, if the Roma immigrants from the southern territory were moving at the beginning as free people (their dependence being the result of a social-historic process of a certain length occurring at the "place of destination") the others, coming from east, had lost their independence before reaching the regions of the Principalities.
Analysing the psychology of the defeated in general, as well as the lack of political and functional harmony of the Roma people (both of the Roma of today and the ones from earlier times), nothing keeps us from thinking that there was no unity of opinions concerning the path to be followed right after the military and political disaster they had suffered.
It is highly possible that the dissension started earlier among their ranks, and very soon after leaving the native places they had probably separated in order to follow the paths proposed by the "casual leaders", who had blamed one another for the burden of the defeats and for having been forced to leave the native lands. It is not excluded that some of these "convoys" had crossed their paths with those of the Tartars (found in full dynamic and expansion) and became their slaves.
The Tartars during their wanderings (including the Romanian Principalities) also "carried" with them the servants who were serving them. Being forced to retreat in disorder on several occasions, they had to abandon their servants (slaves) along with their weapons, prizes of war, etc., which was perhaps even easier than leaving these behind.
On the other hand, the servants themselves took advantage of the situation (panic, rush, carelessness) and did everything in their power to "lose" their master, with the hope of freedom or of finding gentler, more settled masters etc., in one word improving their fate and living conditions.
Mahmud of Ghazni himself, following the traits of the time and the rights of
the winner, carried with him as a war prize, among goods and assets, also a
great number of servants. They, on their part, eventually followed different
and specific routes and histories depending on the situations and mediums that
they had to face and pass.
It doesn't seem accidental to us the fact that great groups of populations,
similar to those of the Roma (clothing, language, habits), can be found in other
parts of the world as well, especially in the Muslim part.
Not to mention the insignificant migrations, which passed off normally, spontaneously and for the self-interest of the migrants, that happened long before the year 1000 A.D..
This way, in Persia it is mentioned as early as the 7th century (AD) a population very similar to that of the Roma, that is three centuries before the "great migration". These, too, had routes, roles and fates that, analysed in this context, would not have other goal than that of complicating things even further.
Therefore we shall leave them aside for the time being, as being insignificant for the discussed problem, stating, however that these realities do not have the power to contravene the hypothesis according to which the main migrating wave had passed through Small Asia and had as final goal Byzantium, and the possibilities that this had offered them, both as great economical and commercial centre, and as an empire where the living conditions were better than in the places they had left behind.
The denomination of the Tsigan itself, which is given to the Roma from the Central and Eastern Europe, is of a Balkan (Greek) origin.
Owing to the fact that the ancestors of the today's Roma did not salute after the roman fashion, namely by shaking hands, but rather after the Hindu fashion, by joining the hands under the chin and by bowing the head, they were called Athinganoi, Athinganos, that is, untouchable.
Many of the old men in our country remember, and some of the old writings or documents preserve the designation of Atsigani (and not of Tsigani), given not long ago to the Roma from different areas of the Romanian Principalities, but especially in Oltenia. This Atsigani has a direct connection with Athinganoi - initial denomination that the ancestors of the actual Roma have received at their contact with Byzantium and the Balkans.
Both Athinganoi and Tsigani (Atigani) are names of external origin, coming from outside of the group, and not from the inside of it.
The Roma have always called themselves Roma, word that means people, men designated in Sanskrit through rama. Subsequently, the names coming from the outside have lost their initial sense. They have received pejorative, social-negative meanings that suggested poverty, misery, different habits, not known and understood by the ones around, and thus, unpleasant, unaccepted - why? -, clothing or different customary rights, lacking "quality" (sic!), people being on the edge of society, in social inferiority.
2. THE ROMA TRIBES
2.1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The sociological approach of the aspects regarding the Roma population, considering the tribe to which various members (who have become subjects of sociological investigation) of this ethnic group belong, would be a procedure without precedent. This kind of approach has been undertaken neither in foreign scientific literature nor in the local literature.
Among the Romanian inquiries one can find attempts to make certain classifications, but the unstable use of criteria, though it has brought some of the researchers close to categories resembling the one we call tribe, has not lead to a clear definition of the category in such a way as to highlight its characteristics and to proceed to an investigation that starts from the obtained classifications.
We estimate that by the study of the Roma population concerned with its distribution in tribes - correlated, of course, with modern elements that charge the modern individual's life: the area or the geographical region to which they belong, the type of community in which they live (rural, urban, big town, small town) - we surpass the stage of ethnographic, ethnological and anthropological approach and we objectively situate the study on the ground of sociological analyses.
This method refers nolens-volens to causal explanations, introspection which emphasise a whole - entirely not linear - social history and, implicitly urges for (and allows the) ordering, describing, looking for trends, and establishing typologies.
The necessity for approaching the study of the Roma in relation to tribe had already been recognised in the years of the Second World War. Ion Chelcea, trying to explain the discrepancies between the data gathered during the census from 1930 (regarding the number of the Roma population) and reality, concluded: "both from theoretical and practical point of view the study of gypsies by categories (s.n.) is recommended. This is why Mr. Flacaoaru has already evaluated as early as 1935 the number of gypsies from our place to 400.000, showing that the number of 262.501 gypsies, given by the Central Statistical Institute, refers "probably" to nomadic gypsies. In our country, such an examination has not been done yet".
We intended to follow this urge, methodological in its character, in the research, which took place during the last eight months of 1992, and the results of which were published in 1993 , but the lack of theoretical construct appropriate to the needs of the research, the lack of a unitary literature oriented towards this domain and especially the lack of time, determined by the "pressure" of the social demand did not allow us the elaboration of a rigorous methodology that would have the tribe as its conceptual centre.
Although, the above mentioned research has not succeeded in definitely following in what way different aspects of the Roma issue vary according to the tribe to which they belong, "it certified", in a way, that this approach is possible and it may offer interesting conclusions.
However, during the fieldwork, in the moments when most of the subjects, speaking about various behaviours or customs, wanted to emphasise or to render something more accurately, he/she used as an introductory formula the expression: "you know that there are more than one races (nations) among the Roma (gypsies)".
In fact, the Roma constitute a single race, but what our interlocutors wanted to emphasise was the idea of tribe - an entity conceived by us as a relatively distinct social category, which presupposes a certain historical charge, that accounts through the more tinted information and explanation it may offer for the "profile" of the social actions and behaviours of different members.
In the case of the Roma the tribe is not restricted to kinship relations, but it does not exclude kinship, on the contrary it contains it. Kinship retains its importance and functionality, but the Roma tribe has been formed on other, powerfully rooted social basis, which constructs complex psychological, behavioural and of action profiles. Therefore, in our perspective, it has special importance.
2.2. THE COMPLEXITY OF THE PROBLEM
Today, the study of the Roma belonging to different tribes is not a simple problem anymore. The difficulty stems both from the researchers' perspective and from the perspective of the population subjected to study.
The contemporary researcher confronts a total lack in the treatment of the problem. He/she has to cultivate on an unploughed land and his/her work appears as a reconstitution. A reconstitution, for which we do not have an "Initial Plan" or "scheme" to suggest, even if only in very general lines, the overall perspective of the original.
The image of this original does not manage to draw, in very clear shapes, even the subjects of the study - and at this point we reach the second threshold of the difficulty - from the perspective of the studied population.
As the above mentioned research has demonstrated, for a great majority of the Roma people, the tribe does not constitute a living fact of conscience anymore. Most of them have real difficulty in indicating, more or less accurately, the tribe they are part of or which their parents or forbears belonged to.
In case in which the researcher is not armed with sufficient knowledge about tribe in order to present to the subject some definite elements, characteristic to the tribe he/she "intuits" the respective subject would belong (with the purpose of helping the subject to "think" and to define him/herself), it is less probable that he/she will succeed to significantly correlate the information he/she gets.
That is why during the research a number of 577 subjects, representing 31.42% of the respondents could not (were not able to) point out the tribe they are part of. In other words, almost one third of the subjects, with whom a working dialogue took place, did not have the conscience of belonging to a tribe, declaring themselves, simply, Roma. If we add to them the respondents who deliberately or by ignorance have indicated the subgroup (sub-tribe) instead of the proper tribe, we ascertain that more than a third of the subjects of the investigation do not know or do not want to know (harder to accept in totality) the tribe they belong to. It is a warning signal that indicates the vast proportion of the "forgetting" or ignoring phenomenon of the belonging to the tribe among the Roma ethnic group in our days.
And this in spite of the fact (confirmed by all the Roma "connoisseurs" consulted during the research) that not long ago the Roma tribes were almost rigidly delimited realities, easy to perceive and to characterise.
This process of social division and differentiation reached its "classical" form (on Romanian territory) between the two World Wars.
This statement does nothing but to increase even more our regret for the insufficiency of an original Romanian contribution which would have achieved a systematic description (if not a large-scale sociological analyses) in times when the theoretical and scientific possibilities were sufficient to reveal a "legible at first sight" phenomenon, since the concerns for the study of the Roma had been already started.
Today the Roma tribes may appear as products of memory even for a part of the Roma who want to collaborate with the researcher, but we have to mention the fact that there are also enough Roma who avoid to make public or to acknowledge the tribe they are part of, though they know it.
The motivation of this behaviour is very different and hard to state circumstantially or de facto, but we believe that it will be more accessible (comprehensible) after we have proceeded to a description of the main Roma tribes from Romania.
Returning to the difficulty to designate the tribes that most of the Roma belong to, we consider that the fact has not a bewildering quality, even if we bear in our minds only the period of four and a half decades of "social homogenisation", of struggle for the constitution of the "unique people" etc., etc., doubled by a merciless industrialisation, which destructively shook a series of specific crafts that were decisive for each of the Roma tribes. But not only that!
In what regards the researcher concerned with the Roma tribes, these appear to him as mental constructs obtained with great difficulties and enough inexactitudes, but with an instrumental-cognitive role which cannot be neglected.
2.3. THE CONSTITUTION AND DYNAMIC OF THE TRIBES
Coming from a place within which the division of the members of the society was made, above all, into a-priori castes , it is difficult to suppose that the Roma's forebears would have another axiological model of social differentiation. Considering the fact that the great mass of the society did not belong to the caste of the Brahmans or to that of the worriers (kshatriya), we do not have any reason to believe that this model was an extremely approved one. On the contrary, we have reasons to believe that this division did not appeal to a great many people, who insured the base of social existence and who were thought of as inferior, impure (chandala), as they dealt with hunting, tanning, liquor trade, they were executioners, grave diggers. Even those who dealt with agriculture or had their origins in agriculture (vaisya), not to mention the servile class (sudra), were not looked at with more appreciation. Through these aspects is explained the easiness (leaving aside the almost insurmountable hardships of life in the actual territory), by which the forbears of the Roma "accepted", getting in contact with Europe, to have so-called "protectors" to "assist" them and to allow them to move, sell their products, etc. as dictated by their interest, and settle down when the fate seemed less harsh; in a word to live together or to "cohabit". The reason becomes more obvious if we do not forget that these "concessions", beside others, were acquired even along with a serious limitation of freedom, which, for them, represented the essence.
Although the division into castes inside the Indian society appears rigid enough, Jeannine Auboyer leaves us to believes that "the access", mostly downwards, made it possible to build a somehow specific, through its asymmetry, form of social mobility.
The caste of worriers (kshatriya) constituted, of course, the "refugee's" majority, but this does not mean that the worriers constituted, in order to avoid the Muslim conqueror's massacre and slavery, the only refugee category.
The migratory flux, as it appears to us, was a large-scale social movement, embracing vast masses of people from all castes. It is not impossible that the Brahman caste was represented among the migrant masses!
The worriers themselves were organically linked to the other castes, the social contribution of which was indispensable and not replaceable. Regardless of what the situation was, the fact that the social division or stratification of the country they had left does not find its equivalent, functionality or the acceptance on European land, remains certain.
However, social differences still existed, either in reality or in the communities' and individuals' imagination (as reminiscences of their existence in entirely different regions), but these differentiations already had another structure. A first overturn of values had been occurring right before their eyes.
In the actual conditions, the differentiations derived both from the concrete way, by which various individuals succeeded in making the advantages and shortcomings of the migration and destination places profitable, and from an overturn of values and social conditions imposed by the current norms and circumstances of the world, which they came in contact with.
It had also been created the need to express these differences. This need, combined with the manifold and specific ways of finding the place and the forms of relation and integration in the European society, generated the division through which the Roma tribes were constituted.
As it occurs in the conscience and descriptions of the elders, the "connoisseurs" from within the Roma ethnic group, the tribes were constituted around occupations, trades and professions. For example the "Cocalarii", or Bone-preparing men (from the word Kokalo which in the Romany language means bone). Whoever produced, by processing bones, various objects needed by the economy of that period, belonged, together with his family, to this tribe.
These objects had the use, extension and value conferred by the social demand, "formulated" according to areas, groups, social categories or levels.
From the known objects we mention the following: needles, knitting needles,
combs, hairpins, small vessels, ornaments, brooches, clips, engravings, meshes
for knifes, hatchets, swords, sabres, etc., handles, chest of drawers, cases,
candlesticks, various lighting objects, etc.
It can be admitted that in Europe this craft represented an adaptation of the
famous ivory-workers from the ancient India to the materials, conditions and
necessities of the European societies. Jeannine Auboyer tells us that "
the ivory sculptors were among the most distinguished people. They were able
to process blocks of stones in mass and in bas/low-relief too, incising and
scraping them with delicate and steady hands. They preferred to work with the
ivory that was obtained from the living elephants instead of that obtained from
the dead ones , but this was already not the case in the new conditions. These
craftsmen were also able to model horns, shells and bones ."
It is important to mention that the Roma people, like the old Indians, transmitted the profession and all the secrets connected with it from generation to generation and from father to son. As the above quoted author points out " the crafts were almost always inherited and were practised in the family" - fact that can be observed in the Romanian territory too, at least in the case of those several crafts that survived until today. This was the result of a practice that was identified with the organisational structure of the society in question: "a characteristic feature of the ancient India's craft and commerce organisation is revealed in the professional classification into corporate groups or "sereni". This is another aspect of the social structure that reshaped the cast division and seemingly had a higher significance then the latest ."
The necessity to adapt to the materials, conditions and necessities of the places where they went through, constituted a definitive factor of the way in which they practised their crafts, of the "dose" of improvisation or professionalism they had to invest in their work, respectively of our research about the way in which various professions had changed, adapted or got nuanced. In other words, this is the zone where the key that determined the evolution, change and dynamic of the professions and the constitution of tribes has to be found.
The presupposed "transformation" of the Indian ivory and carved-stone workers in the Roma constructors or bone-processors could be an example in this sense. The case of the Throughmaker Roma's tribe that was largely debated in the scientific literature (to which the Romanian literature made its own contribution) seems even more edifying. This tribe, sympathised by all the researchers that dealt with them, provoked so many discussions and suppositions that it was considered "an ethnographic enigma ", or it was supposed that it does not belong to the Roma, but it might be something else, an autonomous entity. Moreover, some researchers and theoreticians claim that the Throughmaker Roma are a Romanian tribe that preserved the very old customs and language .
In our opinion, from the perspective of social diachrony, the Throughmaker Roma are the same thing (tribe) with the Lingurari, or the Boyash, or the Caravlachs, or the Blidari, so on and they are the descendants of the early goldsmith's and forest product collectors from the ancient India. We have to add to this the following notes.
At the beginning of their appearance in this territory the Throughmakers' ancestors, as in India, were searching for gold in the rivers or waters with gold containing sand, or sold the products obtained from the rich and large local forests. They brought this ancient craft from the far-away India, where "the gold was extracted from the "ganga" or "collected from the sand of the rivers". " All day long the Goldsmiths were hammering for them (the buyers) gold bars with the help of little sonant hammers"23. However, this resource became less and less profitable both because of the decrease of the quantity of gold that could be produced, and because the exploitation became more difficult. Due to the lack of raw material they (the Throughmakers) had to go more and more up, upstream, where the waters ran faster, and the landscape was less friendly, and all these constituted a serious difficulty in practising their trade. In this way their isolation from their own groups increased in favour of the intensified contacts with the local population of cutters and shepherds. They began to satisfy these groups' demands of vessels and small articles from softwood that were not produced by the local craftsmen. The reducing, until disappearance, of the contacts with their co-ethnic, the "Silversmiths" (Argintarii), for whom they used to sale traditionally the products of their work, the gold, and also with other groups and Roma tribes, resulted in the loss of their language, some specific customs and customary rights. These were substituted by those customs that were overtaken from the population with whom they co-existed, together with the language in which they used to get the orders and used to sale their products, namely the language of the local population.
This early loss of language, connected with the massive assimilation of norms, customs and values, specific for the local majority population, constituted the factors that determined many researchers to doubt the Throughmaker Roma's belonging to the Roma ethnic group, or at least to abstain from declarations in relation to their ethnic belonging.
However, there is a question here. Why did the Throughmaker Roma adopted only the Romanian language, and not also the language of the other majority populations (compared to them), as it happened in the case of other tribes of the Roma who were coexisting with Hungarians, Turks or even Germans? The answer is simple and it is based on historical realities. These ethnic groups, with the exception of the Romanians, were not living in the valleys with forests from the hills and mountainous areas, where the Romanian population of shepherds and stone-cutters (masons) used to live, but they settled down in large areas with open spaces, areas that were suitable for their crafts and trades. For this reason the Throughmaker Roma were not "suspected" to be Germans, Hungarians, Turks, so on, but only to be Roma, Dacian, Romanians, or in the best case a specific autonomous tribe.
Beside the psycho-physical characteristics and features that bespeak the Throughmakers as being Roma and not something else, there is also the mode in which they were treated in relation to the monarch (they being servants of the monarch). They were submitted, like other monarchic slaves as well, to pay annual taxes for performing their craft, exactly in the same way as other Roma from this category. Because the gold of the rivers represented the property of the monarch, whose necessities were increasing, the required quota of gold that had to be delivered to him was established at a quite high level. While at the beginning "the Roma were running to it as to a product offered by nature", later the "annual contribution in gold of each Throughmaker went up to 4 Florins (gold-powder/dust)"24.
The increasing number of gold "diggers" both in the Throughmaker Roma's groups and in the local population, who also practised this craft for a very long time, increased the competition. The desire to get rid of the contribution in gold that increased more and more often and more and more in proportion, pushed the Throughmaker Roma to find solutions that would make them being forgotten and disappeared from the eyes of the monarch's servants. They found a solution for both problems by migrating along the rivers towards the sources from the mountainous areas. That is how it happened that those who went in the west and north-west direction, as experts, ended up working in the precious-metal mines, like the local people themselves, becoming "Baiesi", which is another name for the Roma from Transylvania and Banat. (bae = mine, whole.)
This isolation and division of the groups had as a result the very rapid loss of their language and, in many cases, even the loss of their identities. Having no permanent contact with other members of the Roma community, they did not have the opportunity to use their own language but were forced to use the language of the local population instead. This process took place in the same way, or with certain particularities, in the case of the majority of the Ironsmiths or in the case of other isolated craftsmen, as otherwise in the case of the majority of the settled, with the difference that in the latter case this process was a lot slower and it happened with a remarkable delay.
On the other hand, the Throughmaker Roma, being pressed all the time by the necessities of everyday life, did not manage to survive only by searching for gold. In winter and in some other periods of the year it was not possible to continue this activity. "The exploitation of gold through washing was made in a relatively discontinuous rhythm, not only because the amount of the collected gold depended on the rainy weather, when the waters became huge and carried with them the gold-containing sand as well, but also because of the cold weather, when the washing of gold had to be suspended almost entirely."26
In order to satisfy their daily needs they had to deal secondarily, and some members of the family even in exclusivity, with other crafts too, the crafts that where most accessible for them, those that were practised by the Indian ancestors, too. These were the crafts, for which they had enough row material provided by the places where they settled down, namely, the soft wood, the potter, the water and the collecting of the forest fruits, that were also practised, as a traditional trade by other co-ethnic of the Throughmakers as well.
Far from being a "characteristic feature of the underdeveloped populations" the collection of forest sub-products (fruits, twigs, branches, medical herbs) constituted highly recognised and valued crafts in ancient India. The view according to which only "the primitive people from non-European countries" end up to do such things cannot be but "balcano-ridiculous" , but it also proves the lack of information referring to the crafts from the West and Central European region. Marx's first articles, that made him known in the journalist-circles of that time, were referring exactly to the problem of the branches and woods collected by the peasants in the German forests, but this is another issue.
Jeannine Auboyer tells us that "there were other professions, catalogued like the previous ones, but which, in our occidental eyes, were difficult to imagine on the list of merchants or craftsmen. It can be mentioned, for example, those who were collecting twigs from the forest. They collected these twigs in bundles and brought them on their back in baskets in order to sell them for housewives. Or those who were collecting leaves for several purposes, those who were cutting the grass with a sickle and those who were collecting honey." 28
Parallel with the searching for gold they practised these crafts as well, and as the collection of gold became inefficient, these crafts won more and more space, becoming, later, predominant.
While the collection of the forest sub-products' was regarded in Europe as we pointed out before, the preparation of the softwood in order to be transformed into articles that were necessary for the local economy did not produce indignation. Even more so, since this work was materialised into something that was necessary on a larger scale, it was greeted with sympathy. Therefore, the Throughmaker Roma were looked at with sympathy both by the researchers and by the populations with whom they co-existed.
They transformed the lime-, poplar-, sallow-, alder- or willow-wood into spoons, al kinds of gripes, washing tubs, knead-through, ladles, dowry-coffers, coffers, granaries, bobbins, forks (for spinning and hay-forks), rakes, hangers, frames for sieve, peasant power-lams, chopping boards, cases and other articles described by Ion Chelcea with so much sympathy.
The way the Throughmaker Roma were named in different regions depended on the articles they produced predominantly. For example in Moldavia, where the production of spoon was great they were named "Blidari" or spoonmakers.29
When people started to leave their huts, and began to build houses from bricks, the pottery of the valley started to be transformed in sun-dried bricks, and the Throughmaker Roma from this region (Vrancea, Buzau, Braila) were named Brick-makers.
It has to be remarked that the Roma, depending on the craft they practised, also found their role (utility) in the feudal economies of the places where they went through. Also depending on this they won their position in relation to their masters and co-ethnics as well.
The Scribe, the educated, the teachers, as well as the cooks, artists, clowns, musicians, became in their vast majority "house gypsies" and they received a totally different treatment than those from the stables, or those who were working on the fields, or those who were working in the processing of the metals or non-metals. At the same time, they had other obligations too, that, in the majority of the cases, meant the limitation or even the loss of their freedom.
We have to take into account that the profession represents the most important factor of socialisation. It shows the concrete modalities in which people assure their existence. Due to this fact it becomes a determining component of the way of thinking, acting, relating and behaving of the majority connected with it. The particularities appear in function of the individual features of temperament and personality, and depends on the place and conditions where and in which the professions are practised.
From the perspective of this specific differentiation, we must take into consideration the fact that the new differentiation was produced between the Roma people when for some of them the process of "settling" near to a residence or to an estate got started, while the other Roma people continued to peregrinate from place to place in order to obtain the necessary things for life. Among the characteristics offered by the safety of the residence and the ones offered by the continuously changing "horizon" - a source of information and new experiences - differentiation appeared that were imprinted in the whole psychology of these groups.
The differentiation was materialised in the ways of obtaining the needs for life, in habitation patterns, in their positions in relation to the landowner, in the effort invested in finding and "showing" their benefit and it had continued quite to the conception about world and life, about the relationship with Divinity, about the system of standards and values, respectively the set of the adopted symbols.
If at the beginning the differentiation among groups had an emphasised, easily remarkable "specific romanes", in the course of times this have been transformed, through "saturation" with customs, traditions, standards and other elements of culture and life-style of the contact populations. The process was possible and was emphasised as being asymmetrical because the contact populations were always in majority, independently of their ethnicity (Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Turks, Tartars etc.)
To understand what kind of internal mechanisms took place, and in what social circumstances were they going on in order to rebuild and to retransform themselves through their historical development (that represented also the social history of the Roma tribes), a more nuanced analyses and more wide-ranging documentation is necessary.
The investigation, description and explanation of these mechanisms need, without doubt, special research and a more exact theoretical detailing and deepening, respectively a more adequate methodological stock.
We believe that the category of "tribe" itself will be able to open new perspectives for studying the social history of the Roma people and for gathering deeper knowledge about the so-called "problem of the Roma population." .
According to the above mentioned facts, we can note for the time being that the belonging to the professional group in the identification of a member of an ethnic group (thus as Roma people) constituted the main element for a long time (and in many cases it still does) that acted as a social-historical priority in the self-identification and in the reciprocal identification of the Roma ethnicity members.
However, the most important element of their identification as citizens was their belonging to a coexistent majority group, from which they acquired behavioural, cultural, social standards.
Continuing the previous idea, it seems to be extremely important the belonging to the majority linguistic group. In this way it is possible, that both the previous researchers and those who conducted the research from the summer of 1992, have had the opportunity to ascertain that in different regions of the country the persons identified from outside (by the other citizens) to be Roma peoples, declared themselves Romanians, Hungarians, Turkish, Tartars etc., therefore they identified themselves with the majority ethnic group in which they lived. 19,13% among the subjects of the research from 1992 are included in this category.
The motivation of such an option wasn't established yet in adequate argumentative manner. What is the proportion of the prestige-reactions, how much represented the fear for aftermath, where started the identification with standards and values belonging to the majority group in a way that the others were felt as "strangers"? These are problems awaiting for an answer. And this answer cannot be a linear one.
Temporarily, the arguments of the language and (in many cases) the arguments of religion remain available.
The classification according to this perspective was called "classification by nationality", and together with the division by the historical-legal criteria (monarch, monastery and landowner) or by criteria of stability (settled and nomadic) constituted the classification forms of the Roma people that offered (and can offer now as well) a certain operationality.
And these criteria managed "to grip" something that reflected in the life-style of the aimed individuals, but the classification according to tribes formed a more deeper penetration in the " intimacy" of the former mechanisms that outlined a psycho-social profile of different groups.
If from the years of the 1848 up to the end of the 1950s, the mentioned division was easier to handle (since the process achieved its maturity by becoming an evidence), now it represents, in most of the cases, a reflection of the past, an "indicator" appealed to only in the last resort. The reason for this is the gradual disappearance of traditional trades and occupations specific for the Roma people who were struck by the industrial expansion that substituted them with modern, unspecified professions and with occupations suitable for new demands and social contexts.
The marriages between partners belonging to different tribes became more and more possible also for the reason of the social transformations determined by the industrialisation, commuting, and the modernisation of social life.
If in the above mentioned period the marriages between different tribes' partners generated small social "crises", and the communities were concerned about them for a long time, then in the period after the '50s and especially in the second half of the sixth decade of our century, when all of the Roma communities were forced to settle by administrative measures, a similar action resulted, in the worst case, in the indignation of traditionalists.
We must mention that in the framework of traditional tribes (Ironsmiths, Boot-makers, Musicians, Coppersmiths, Tinmen, Bear-leaders, Bone-preparing men etc.), under the pressure of industrialisation, modernisation and the change of structure of demands, there appear a great of number of "specifications", be it in the inside of professions at a global level, or depending by regions or by other criteria, creating sub-tribes with new names and new determinations.
This way the Ironsmiths of smaller calibre "specialised" themselves only in the making of horseshoes (with a reduced material consume and facilitated sales), constituting the sub-tribe of Farriers.
One part of the bone-preparing men who made combs got the name of Combers, and the people who couldn't make a living from bone-preparing specialised themselves in the trading of fluffs and feathers, getting the name of flutters.
The Roma settled in Transylvania who were dealing with the commercialisation of carpets and silk were named gypsies of silk. To this designation contributed their relatively good manners, forced by the long trips abroad and their connections with the clients who came from a more civilised world (not everyone could afford to buy carpets and silk), as well as their clothing of "widely-travelled people" that was clearly different from that of their co-ethnics, who struggled on the estates or depended on the farming works and necessities of the dwellers of different communities.
The names derived from the names of localities where such communities lived and live do not mark the occupation of the group and do not represent a tribe in the sense given to this category in this paper. These indicate first of all the place or the region where the respective person, and sometimes also another characteristic came from that gives them something specific in comparison with others, but this characteristic has nothing in common with their occupation. This can refer to their material position, to their group-solidarity, to some customs, but not to the occupation. From this respect we note that there are a number of Roma people who are called Tismanars - a name derived from the Tismana Monastery around which lived a numerous Roma population who had lost their language a long time ago. The name Tismanars (Oltenia region) was got by all the people who no longer speak the Romany language, namely all the people being similar from the perspective of spoken language to the people that belong to the Tismana Monastery and who had lost their language.
A number of the Roma people from other regions of the country also lost their language quite a long time ago (a great part of the settled) but this name was given (from inside the Roma group) only in Oltenia. In fact, beside the mentioned region, almost neither of the Roma people were aware of the existence of the Tismana Monastery or of the loss of the Romany language.
In accordance with the regions the Roma are named (in most of the cases by inside of their ethnical group) simply people from Banat, Oltenia, Dobrogea etc. An exception are the Boldeni Roma people, whose name comes from the Bold locality near Bucharest, but now by "Boldeni" they mean the florist Roma (who deal with the trading of flowers - thus a profession) from the area and from the territory of Bucharest. When they say Boldeni Gypsy no-one thinks of the Bold locality but of the florists who live in Bucharest mainly in the districts of "Tei" and "Colentina" or in the areas nearby.
In the dynamic of the development of the Roma tribes it is the gypsy musicians that represent an interesting situation. Up to the middle of the '60s in this respectable tribe only the settled Roma people were included. Otherwise, the clients who employed them at different celebrations wouldn't have been able to contact them. As in the case of other trades practised by the Roma people, also in the case of musicians the profession was transmitted from father to son, and the cases where a member of another tribe became musician were very rare.
By the time the prestige of this profession increased compared to other professions, and the process of settling extended, they joined the musicians belonging to almost all tribes. Moreover, for a part of musicians from the countryside who were caught in the process of agricultural co-operativisation, the musician trade ceased to be not so important any longer, and some of them even abandoned it definitively according priority to agricultural activities, which, though harsher, offered them much more safety and stability.
The new wave coming from other tribes had the aim to revitalise the Roma workers through the infusion of specific elements better retained among the ex-nomad or semi-nomad tribes, which seemed a return to the authentic sources of their music. Their music was deprived by some of the traditional musicians of the specific Roma elements in favour of the elements demanded by social command.
In this way can be explained the fact that now at the celebrations among the Roma people who were ex-nomads or semi-nomads, the appreciated and preferred musicians are the ones who belong to their group and not the traditional musicians who practised the profession before and right after the Second World War.
While the old musicians had their clients mostly from the community of the majority contact populations, the ones coming recently to the scene of this profession have their clients almost exclusively from the Roma communities.
This aspect leads us to the idea that the legal situation and the administrative
position of the people can definitively mark the professional distribution of
individuals, too.
Or in case of the Roma population, the dynamics of the conditions and the influence
of the booms have worsened the conditions of living more than in case of other
populations during their whole existence.
2.4. THE TRIBES INVOLVED IN THE RESEARCH
During the first treatment of the informative material gained from the fact-finding fieldwork, we "discover" neither more nor less than 28 Roma tribes. We got this number after examining the "declarations" made by the subjects in the moment of their questioning referring to the tribe they or their ancestors belonged to.
The statistical classification of these declarations appears in the following table, which we will call "the table of the Roma tribes deducted from the declarations of the subjects to the research".
Apart from the classification of the research data the table contains mistakes of "decoding " of the information received from the subjects to the research, too.
In one part there are grouped in the same class (position 15) the people with a very different way of life, belonging to distinctive tribes; in the other group there are separated the people from the same tribe (positions 8 and 23).
In the position 15, the Ironsmiths and Farriers are quite the same thing. Both categories work with hot iron (including the iron used to make horseshoes) with the remark that the Ironsmiths make any metal objects (and in some cases there were Ironsmiths who made the woodwork of the objects with wooden parts e.g. carriages), while the Farriers specialised in only, or mainly in making horseshoes, which they applied onto the animals' hoofs (horses, oxen, donkeys).
There is only a difference of quality, and it is dictated either by the wish to earn money easier, or by the conditions of practising their professions, or by the abilities and skills each of them managed to practice his profession with.
Both "professions" enter into the Ironsmiths' tribe, which is also included into the big family of the Settled. They cannot be included by any means into the same group of classification (or tribe) with the Coppersmiths who went on leading a nomadic way of life, worked with totally different materials (non-ferrous metals) and most importantly, even these days they have absolutely different way of life.
In present it turned to better for both the two tribes, their professions have been required again, especially in the world of the villages.
Things change when we have a look at the positions 8 and 23. Both the Platers
and the Tinsmiths worked with the same material (the same as in the present
those who went on practising their profession), namely the Tinsmith who was
given the job to plate the vessels in the household up as well as forecasting
the future, healing epilepsy and pains. These "quackeries" were practised
mainly by the Tinsmith women who were in direct contact with their customers
either when they took the "orders" or handed in the "finished"
products.
We must mention that both categories belong to the Tinsmiths (typical semi-nomadic
tribe) with the remark that in some parts of the country they were called Tinsmiths
instead of Platers.
Going back to the data and considering the descriptions and explanations of the "experts", we obtain a condensation of the data around only 12 tribes in the literal sense of the word, and there are added the Settled to them, a category with a more complex significance.
The following four categories (the Gabors, Turks-Tartars, Crab-sellers, and Hungarianised) have other significance which will be discussed later.
1. The single Coppersmith was moved from the position 15 and was added to the
Gold-washers, Wandering and Nomadic Camper gypsies, thus we obtained the Ironsmiths'
tribe, who were said that "produced with the same perfection arms and light
chain armours, scissors, and surgical instruments. For the farmers they made
ploughshares, chains, spades, sickles, poles to handle the oxen; the carpenters
also came to buy axes, hammers, saws, gimlets, and wooden nails. The hunters
were also their frequent customers, asking for strong knives, poles, swords
to cut... The barbers came for razors, and the tailors for needles." "He
also knew how to transform iron into steel."
For all these above mentioned reasons, the Ironsmiths had their own place in
the feudal economy of the Romanian village, and they were also the wealthiest
from among the Roma, too.
It was again the profession (and the instrument they worked with) that imposed (and permitted) the Ironsmiths to work in a permanent place. They were one of the firsts settled, but they were also among the firsts who lost their language. In this chapter they were "surpassed" by the Throughmakers, only. However, some descriptions put the Ironsmiths into the group of the Wanderings! What is the reason for this? We can get the explanation if we closely examine another tribe, namely the Bear-leaders. They were the descendants of the old circus artists who used to travel from one place to another and offer open-air (street) performances. In European and especially Romanian grounds, this type of performance did not gather much audience, and the performers were not offered the sure minimal means of existence, either. This is the reason why some of them started rearing and taming bears (this is the origin of their name, too); others joined the workshops of the Ironsmiths for a period of time, while the others stayed with the same professions. None of them renounced the pleasure of free wanderings they had practised in their native country - India.
Those who passed through the workshops of the blacksmiths as well, not only did help them for a piece of sure bread in some certain periods of time, but they also learned the craft to such an extent that a part of the "trifles" stolen from the blacksmith master's time became "objects of production" for the bear-leaders. The blacksmith being busy with the production of the tools and equipment so necessary for the agriculture, finally left the production of keys, locks, hoops, dust-pans, knitting needles, needles, and breech-blocks to them. Besides the fact that these things were not too often demanded, they did not need too much material, they were light and could be produced without being previously ordered, and later they could be carried in the carriage or in the satchel to be offered to those who needed them in different places. Thus, they permitted Bear-leaders to travel, and if the performance offered by the bear and tamer did not ensure enough for the living, the handicraft products constituted some supplementary source. They managed to learn the craft so well that finally the metalwork or the production of arms and pistols were ensured almost exclusively by the members of the Bear-leaders.
This co-operation between the Blacksmiths and Bear-leaders within the domain of the craft, as well as the periods of cohabitation in the same workshop in some periods of time, made some researchers include the Blacksmiths too in the group of the nomads where the Bear-leaders came from. For many times the Bear-leaders, in order not to lose their clients (for being rather ill-famed) introduced themselves as Locksmiths or even Blacksmiths.
However, the Blacksmiths, having a large scale of heavy and big instruments (hammers, sledgehammers, flint-stones, bellows, and all sorts of pincers) could not travel from one place to another. On the other hand, their craft being demanded, they did not have to come out in the reception of their customers, but they had to have a permanent place where they could be found whenever their services were required.
Being directly linked to the agricultural production of the villages, many of the Blacksmiths had their own land, in most cases they were bought and added to the one obtained through the redistribution of land.
When their craft was shadowed by the industrial production, the majority of them became farmers, but in the same time they made themselves useful in the heavy industry (foundries, forges, iron metallurgy in general) and in the constructions (blacksmiths and concrete workers).
The descendants of the Blacksmith families started out towards industrial schools (generally iron processing), but towards theoretical and university studies, too. Nowadays very few of them admit to be Roma.
Those who remained Blacksmiths at the co-operatives, after the changes in 1989 were the first to get the orders of the villagers for carts and tools.
2. The tribe of the Platers emerged by the union of the so-called different
tribes: of the Platers and the Tinsmiths. Both of them form the tribe of the
Platers, but the two terms are the different reflexes of the two entities in
different areas.
To this naming contributed the self-naming of one of the parties from among
the Platers as Tinsmiths (mainly originated from the name of the material used)
due to the fact that the Platers (with a few exceptions in the area of Giurgiu-Bucharest)
were the poorest Roma. They spent their lives in covered wagons dragged by little
buffalo, and apart from the milk obtained from them they did not have any other
source of food. They ensured their living with the food received (by the women)
from the farms of the communities they settled down nearby periodically, as
a means of payment for the things plated or the help offered to the housewives
in the farm, or sometimes for their work in the fields. Begging for food for
themselves or the buffaloes had an important impact on the way of life of this
tribe, that never possessed a piece of own land through none of its members.
In order to ensure their living they commuted between a reduced number of localities
near each other.
Most of them did not make an option for any religions, and they practised the christening of the sun.
It seems that the Platers are the descendants of the Roma from Turkey who were either prisoners or were left here as spoils of war, either fugitives or settled here.
After 1965 a significant number of the members of this tribe (and in some areas the total number) became good farmers, working in the co-operatives with the production of vegetables, root crops, but especially in the livestock farming. Nowadays the authentic intellectuals originating from this tribe can be found in the wealthier areas (Bucharest, the Agricultural Sector of Ilfov, Giurgiu).
3. The tribe of the Bone-preparing men about which there were said a few things in the sub-chapter "The constitution and dynamics of the tribes" was established adding to the ones who called themselves Bone-preparing men those who declared themselves Combers.
Here we must mention that some of the Bear-leaders who had adopted from the crafts of almost all the tribes, also sold and made combs, but the real Combers were the Bone-preparing men, or the real Bone-workers (Kokalo).
When the products made of bones (and partly enumerated above) were replaced by the big, more varied, and cheaper industrial serial, a part of the Bone-preparing men who had not gone to the unqualified jobs of the plastic industry (especially) or other fields, they tended towards the sanitation of the cities or the acquisition of feather for which they offered money or kitchenware (pots, saucepans, mugs, cutlery etc.) purchased from different co-operatives or institutions.
4. In the tribe of the Coppersmiths there are included all who declared themselves as such, and there are added those who called themselves Gold-washers ("Zlatari", from the term zolot = string, gold coins tied in the hair), Wanderers, Nomadic Campers or Brush-makers.
All of them have had a long nomadic life, they took shelter in tents (and its nostalgia is still present when it is "laid down" when they want to work, even in their own courtyard or in the field), and their main material for work was a plate of copper which was used to manufacture cauldrons, frying pans, pots, saucepans, stills, ornaments, articles of cult, trays, glasses etc. More recently these materials have been replaced by the rustproof plate that has been used for the same purpose.
They travelled in colourful carriages with a high wicker framework, dragged by horses or donkeys. From the hair obtained after cutting the tails and manes of the horses and donkeys, which dragged their carriages with the tents and tools from place to place, they made brushes and lime brushes, which they sold in the localities they passed through or stopped in.
The selling and mostly the manufacturing of lime brushes were the women's jobs about who Ion Chelcea said: "the lime brush and fortune telling are their professions", and he goes on saying: "the lime brushes are made of "mixed" hair of pig and horse". Magic among the camper women has a significant usage... Magic is mixed with fortune telling" .
The christening of the sun was present within this tribe, too, and the name "bulibasha" (leader) has been preserved until the present days.
The practice of customary right of the gypsy judgement is called Kris by the Coppersmiths, where the judges are the oldest and most thoughtful members.
5. The Throughmakers who had already been discussed in details in the sub-chapter "The constitution and dynamics of the tribes" were "re-processed" by being included those who declared themselves as such, together with those who named themselves Brick-makers. The christening of the sun was a reality with them as well.
6. The tribe of the Settled includes all those subjects who declared themselves Settled, Borers, "Romanised" or just simply Roma without being able (or willing) to indicate their affiliation to a certain tribe.
There is the possibility that a part of the subjects who declared themselves as such not to be part of the big family of the actual family of the Settled. They either did not know which family they were belonging to, or did not wish to acknowledge their affiliation to a certain tribe. Thus, they may belong to any Roma tribe. But as there were no signs regarding the fact that the subjects did not wish to reveal their tribe, we have remained at the assumption that not declaring the tribe is due to ignorance.
As the settled (of the village, linked to the centre of a certain locality) were the first to renounce the traditional way of life, who left the compact Roma communities and lost most of the language and customs specific to the ethnic group, we were inclined to believe that the origins of the ignorance of those questioned consist of the above mentioned elements which determined us to include them in the Settled tribe.
The Roma who call themselves (or who are called) Romanised are those who suffered an acute process of "Romanianisation", borrowing all or the majority of the customs, norms, and behaviour of the Romanian population they had been living together with.
These people who have totally lost their language and costumes, do not speak "with accent" any more; they have adopted the religion of the Romanian communities who they had been living together with in the same village or town. They have only the conscience of tribe that - as it has been ascertained - reveals itself. As we already stated, there are Roma who from very early times have been linked to a certain place, to the "centre of the village" where they worked and lived either on their own responsibility (in craftsmen's workshops, or on their own land), or in others' workshops or land.
The category of the Settled is in a way identified with the category of the sedentary, but in the same time, in a more restricted and more authentic way it involves the Roma whose lives have been connected to the village, the agriculture, and the craftsmen's workshop which were auxiliary to the agriculture and village life. In one word, they served agriculture and the farmers before the oppression, when it became a mass phenomenon, and after liberation, too.
Later on any Roma could become Settled who got hold of a permanent address, a job, and a flat to serve him as a residence for the majority of the periods of time of a calendar year.
A Settled could become one who acquired the right of property over a piece of land or managed to establish a workshop where he could work and earn constantly the means of existence without being forced to travel continuously from one place to another in order to obtain the things necessary for his living, as the similar ethnic group, the Nomadic Campers did.
Apart from the traditional craftsmen from the centre of the town or village (the Boot-makers or Shoemakers, Musicians, Bricklayers, Florists, Silk-weavers etc.) together with the families of the settled, those with no profession and property represented the highest percent in this category. After being in oppression, they quitted the nomadic life as well as the craftsmen, and settled down in certain centres where they offered their arms to work at houses and in the fields, or they lived on what the nature could offer them or remained after the harvest. They have always been a cheap work force, any time at hand.
The Settled represent the category whose members were assimilated by the populations in majority in the highest number from among the Roma.
Its members can be found in each level of the country's social-economical and political life. This category has offered the society its members ranging from the humble unqualified and the criminal up to the head of state.
7. The Gabors do not represent a tribe characterised by a certain profession, but it originates its name from their last name. All of them have the name of Gabor for their last name. There are Roma from Transylvania who took over the name of Gabor from the families whose land they were working in.
In present their vast majority deals with commerce, but there are also Tinsmiths on the constructions, Coppersmiths, and who deal with modern professions, too.
8. The Crab-sellers owe their name to a locality and we do not dispose of enough data to make a minimal description, either.
It is possible that they are a tribe in course of formation, but their specific aspects have not been formed, or we did not manage to find them.
9. The Turks, Tartars, and the Hungarianised are the Roma from Dobrogea who speak Turkish, Tartar, and Hungarian languages as fluently as their mother tongue, and use Romanian language only with those who do not understand any other language.
They have lived along with the Turkish, Tartar, and the Hungarian population, attaining their customs, norms, behaviour, even their religion.
In general they do not speak Roma language.
The other categories can be included into the category of the tribe and they were grouped according to the researches.
10. The Boot-makers or Shoe-makers belong to the Settled family, and they worked in either small (even humble) own workshops, which was often one room of their own house, or in bigger workshops which generally did not belong to them.
Nowadays their number has fallen, their descendants are more interested in agriculture or modern professions.
11. In the late 50s the Musicians belonged to the Settled family. The best professionals who had the chance to live in the city could lead a better life; an elite social and artistic group grew up from among them.
After settling down, the Musician tribe was "enlarged" with the members of other tribes. A large part of the rural Musicians had a double status: they were farmers for the weekdays and musicians for the holidays.
A great quality of this tribe (in the traditional sense of the word) is the preservation of the Romanian melodies and folk songs. "The gypsies, willy-nilly have contributed to the preservation and distribution of our songs, as well as to their amplification. The ballads have disappeared, we can hardly hear them from the old. However, the Musicians still preserve them."
Moreover, the quality of the preservers does not stand for the Musicians only, but it also characterises the whole ethnic group. Alike their ancestors from India, the Roma seem to be traditionalists par excellence. For this reason we are inclined to believe that even their "access" to the modernism of the life today, apart from a series of other factors with objective character, they show the signs of this rigidity which is due to their loyalty towards tradition.
The author quoted above goes on saying: "the gypsies show themselves as a social class preserving some certain goods of the folk culture... Our old national costumes have disappeared in many regions, they are hardly ever worn by the gypsy women... And let's go further on. Take the folk customs. Nowadays many of them are in the process of being forgotten and as a result of this, they are ridiculous, and only the gypsies dare to turn against ridicule, executing them the same as they practised in the past. Their names are: the "turca" (goat), "vasilca" (prim head of a pig), "paparuda" (rainmaker girl) etc."
It was the gypsies who on the occasion of the winter celebrations went with the Siva, a custom they had brought with them from the heart of India and which is still practised in some communities.
In the foreword of the work "Everyday Life in the Ancient India", our attention is called upon the fact that "we must pay attention to the character traditionalist par excellence of the Indian civilisation. For that very character, the division between the real and conventional is nuanced, not to say subtle."
When listening to some certain Roma say, the "incursions" like "blather on a dead horse", or I'm "along with the road" make the "outsiders" amused or indignant, but they are in fact nothing but specific "inclinations to fill their own sayings with all sorts of meanings, ... with the mixture of concrete definitions and fairy-tales."
Never ever will a Roma, who has been living in a traditional community say his thoughts or problems directly, clearly, and in a rational way: he will always make an appeal to a fable, will use a metaphor, or will tell a story in which he has never been involved, and with their help he will "suggest" what he really wants to say.
12. At the moment the Florists are the most homogenous from among the Roma. Their legal occupation is d.p.d.v. from the administrative point of view and is regarded with sympathy. Due to this fact, they have shown a fast economic and social development.
The Florist tribe is a relatively new one. They date back from the period between the two World Wars, and for many people, including the Roma as well, it is identified with the Roma who live in the quarters in Bucharest: Tei, Colentina, and the surrounding areas, but we can find florist Roma in much more areas, too.
This activity also has its origins in the ancient Indian times. "Practising a special Indian profession the garland traders (malakara) were numerous and appreciated... they made the garland (mala) with a large variety of patterns, and they used the grass munja, reed, cotton stalk as a support.
This support was assembled with perfect artistry, since it is an art being present in the list of the "sixty-four arts", with flowers, peacock feathers, ornaments made of horn, shells, leaves, fruit, and seeds. This was a remunerative trade, as the mala (garlands) played a significant role in the Indian life."
When the "role" of the flowers grew larger in the Bucharest society as well, this occupation was developed by the wives of the Bricklayer gypsies (Zavragii (Quarrelsome)) from the locality of Bold near Bucharest.
This trade became a remunerative business, and as it was paying more than their own occupation, it was taken over by the men, too. The next step was the change of the permanent address to one as close to the market as possible, which was dominated by the wives with authority. Thus, they moved to the two Bucharest quarters or very close to them.
13. The Copers - settled Roma whose main occupation was horse dealing. Apart from their activity of buying-selling, on a more reduced scale, they were also horse breeders, but they were dealing with "rejuvenating", "repairers", or " curer" of horses, too. "Under his hands, a lazy, apathetic, meagre horse turns miraculously into an irrepressible, lively horse that eats the ground; an old horse seems young, full of life... There is an illness caught by horses only and it is called sigh. The horse coughs badly, and if taken to work, it goes as much it can and dies on the very spot. It is said that only the Copers possess the secret of healing sigh."
Of course, the other tribes were also trading with horses (the Coppersmiths, the Bear-leaders etc.), but in their case "copering" was not a permanent occupation. Their basic occupation fits in the occupation of their tribe, while for the settled Copers their occupation was a way of life, a main source of existence. This tribe has disappeared.
If it was possible that the horses sold by Copers from other tribes could have originated from theft (they might have been stolen by themselves or by other people from the population in majority, who sold them for a ridiculous price, and the dealers re-sold them at a much higher cost), this thing would have been almost impossible with the settled Copers, since they were known, they had a permanent address, were kept in the records of the police and administrative authorities etc.
14. The Riddlers - a tribe of nomadic campers who alike the Copers have also disappeared with the expansion of the industry and the generalisation of the big agricultural production performed on large territories suitable for motorization.
Their main activity consisted of manufacturing riddles and sieves for different purposes (to select seeds, to sift maize or wheat flour, to riddle ballast, to obtain different kinds of sands etc.).
The materials used were specially prepared animal skins. They used any kind of skin, but preferred pig and calfskin.
15. The Silversmiths still exist, but their number has been decreasing more and more. Nowadays we can meet Silversmiths (or Ringmakers - another term for this tribe) in the areas of Teleorman and Alexandria, Bucharest, Ialomita, and very few of them in the area of Tulcea. There are approximately 1,000 families (information given by Dumitru Ion-Bidia, member of this tribe and president of The Community of the Ethnic Roma - organisation established on ethnic criteria).
This tribe is characterised by processing precious metals (gold and silver), and they produce ornamental goods (earrings, rings, bracelets, buttons, brooches, buckles, cassettes etc.) or cultic objects (candlesticks, frames for icons, bells etc.). They are called Silversmiths because the basic material was silver, but they also wanted to be distinguished from the gold-washers that called themselves Goldsmiths. Outstanding craftsmen with a reduced, but archaic range of instruments, the Silversmiths formed the elite of the travelling tribes. The Silversmiths also practised the gypsy judgement known as "to take one out for speech", and marriages are similar to the ones found with the Coppersmiths, Bear-leaders, another traditional Roma, with no legal documents, but as a result of an agreement between the families and/or partners.
16. The tribe of the Bear-leaders is the descendant of the old tamers and circus artists. The members of this tribe used to entertain the families of the masters in the quality of stage players, magicians, tamers, dancers, tightrope walkers etc. They got their name after the bears they tamed and trained to travel with them through the villages and towns. The tamer (bear-leader sang and played the drum while the bear danced - a reason why its master was given money, food, or crops.
In return for some money, the bear was also used to trample on the backs of the people who suffered from ache in their spine and back.
As in our country there were rarely any circus shows performed in public markets, the appearance of the bear-leader and his bear stirred the curiosity of the old and the children, and the young people were eager to measure their strength with the strong bear which had been taught by his master to let himself defeated.
The members of this tribe (with an extremely high rate of childbirth) worked hard to "steal" a little bit from the occupation of the other different tribes, but not as much as to be forced to give up their travelling way of life. It seems that they learned the most from the Ironsmiths, and this is a reason why some researchers put them into this category.
After settling down, even though the bears disappeared from the "requisite" of the members of this tribe, their vast majority has lived in relatively compact communities, speak Roma language, preserve their special traditions and customs, and have kept the gypsy judgement called "stabor". They practised the christening of the sun, and marriage is without documents.
In spite of the very reduced percent of assimilation into the populations in majority, there are as many intellectuals present as those descending from the Settled (their number can also be compared to the Settled).
17. The Silk-weaver Roma are in fact settled Roma from Transylvania whose main occupation was carpet and silk trade. They set off from the area of Brasov and Rupea and arrived as far as the coasts of France, Italy, or even further.
These were the Roma tribes we "met" during our research, but they do not qualify as the totality of the Roma tribes still in existence or who existed in Romania.
In the above we spoke about the Zavragii (Quarrelsome) - a denomination given to the Bricklayers in different areas, especially in the zone of Bucharest and its environs. They were called so because work in the constructions is rough and tiring, and this is a reason of the growth of nervosity, quarrels which lead to a lot of uproar produced by some exhausted workers who started quarrelling. This is how they were finally called Zavragii (Quarrelsome) (who make "zarva" = uproar and quarrel). However, they are not a tribe of their own, but represent the tribe of the Bricklayers with a different regional name.
There was also the tribe of the Netoti (Different From The Rest) whose courage and slyness made them very different from the other categories of gypsies. These characteristics were sharpened by the difficulties they suffered from. Since the Netoti have a cruel nature, setting even the smallest misunderstandings with knives and axes, some historians who studied the life of the gypsies believe that they are the descendants of the old leaders who led the gypsies from India. The Netoti could not bear oppression and if once caught they did not stop until they managed to escape, and could not rest until they ran to the only master - freedom".
The obsession of freedom, reinforced by the regime there were subordinated those who had lost it in a way or other, determined these people not to be the same as the rest, but to be as their leading ancestors had taught them to be rebellious. In other words, they were different from all the others, this is a reason why they were called Netoti (Different From The Rest).
As freedom in itself did not appease hunger, they understood to satisfy it by theft and robbing, the same as the fighters did, even though they were not in war any more.
But as these tribes were not included in the research and some of them also left the scene of history, we will not insist on them any longer.
FINAL REFLECTIONS
In their continuous fight against the new brought by the scientific and technical progress and the development of history, the Roma tribes appear, develop, and disappear. In the didactic sense of the word, they cannot be found anymore as they were presented above. On the other hand, the modernisation of the productive life led to several mixtures and interference between these tribes.
In these conditions, it is natural to ask why there is a need to study and know them.
The answer cannot avoid mentioning that in a not too far period of time, these tribes were real and distinctive, and they left their mark on their members. However, what is more important, appears in the fact that these influences still exist, and their examination allows us a more profound understanding of the way of life of the Roma from the different communities, and implicitly, it permits us to think and imagine solutions to decrease the tension of the crisis going on between the traditional way of life of the Roma of the different communities and the norms of modern life.
This understanding would permit a better understanding in explaining the present situation of the Roma in order to stabilise some priorities and actions to operate the change that is absolutely necessary in the way and conditions of life of the vast majority of the population belonging to this ethnic group.
Only being so drastic, can the problem of the Roma find a solution, which is rational and operational in the same time.
The recent study co-ordinated by the Zamfir professors concludes with the encouragement of a conception of a "strategy to examine the problems of the Roma".
There is a correlated programme, with the aim to produce quality changes within this population, and it was made rather widely known both in the country and abroad. This programme, together with the proposal of a suitable structure to implement and realise its contents was sent to all the governments after 1989, but so far no one has found the necessary time to study and analyse it so that it could be put in practice.
We remain optimistic, and we are convinced that necessity is a more imperative factor than disinterest!