Some supposed learned experts on the Romani People claim that the Rom were/are low caste, or untouchables – Pariah – even because of the fact that many were/are workers in metals, such as iron, copper, brass, gold, to mention but a few.
What I fail to understand is how they could ever have arrived at such a conclusion seeing that the metalworkers in India of old were held in the highest esteem. Do we really believe that a high caste warrior would have ever put on an armor that was smithed by a low caste or even untouchable? This is entirely unthinkable.
It is therefore not possible that the Rom, our People, were at the bottom of the ladder, so to speak, and, as metalworkers could have been of the low caste or even untouchables.
According to an old venerable Hindu I knew many years back iron would not have been allowed to be worked, in those days, by low caste or untouchables because, so I was told, iron was/is regarded as a sacred metal, a metal from the gods.
During the times before Mohammed of Ghanzi India was the center of metalworking and fantastic works were cerated in iron and gold and other metals. Pillars of tens of meters in height were built using the forge-welding technique and those pillars and towers are absolutely awesome.
The Rom never left “India” in one single wave but, as all people tended to move about, in trickles and small waves. But I digressed.
The Rom were once some of the finest metalsmiths and were, in many places, armorers to the feudal houses and even to the courts of kings and emperors. The quality of the knives and swords was some of the finest in the world and, while I may go out here on a limb, lookin gat the names of many, I believe that many of the great knifemakers of Solingen, Klingenthal, and also Sheffield, were of the Romani-Gypsy People. Have I go proof for that? No, with the exception of the names of the knife making companies, especially the names of their founders and owners.
This is yet another thing, like with the arrival of the Romani-Gypsy in Germany, where the assumptions of the experts do not seem to bear out the factors of life.
Think about it...
© Michael Smith (Veshengro), March 2008
