It would be a curious matter of research could we learn whether the missionaries of the Middle Ages, who made abstinence from horse-flesh a point of salvation (when preaching in Germany and in Scandinavia), derived their superstition, in common with the Gipsies, from India.
There can be no doubt that in seeking for the Indian origin of many Gipsy words we are often bewildered, and that no field in philology presents such opportunity for pugnacious critics to either attack or defend the validity of the proofs alleged.

The very word for "doubtful" or "ambiguous," _dubeni_ or _dub'na_, is of this description.

Is it derived from the Hindu _dhoobd'ha_, which every Gipsy would pronounce _doobna_, or from the English _dubious_, which has been made to assume the Gipsy- Indian termination _na_?
Of this word I was naively told, "If a juva's bori (girl is big), that's _dub'ni_; and if she's shuvalo (swelled up), _that's_ dubni: for it may pen (say) she's kaired a tikno (is _enceinte_), and it may pen she hasn't." But when we find that the English Gipsy also employs the word _dukkeni_ for "doubtful," and compare it with the Hindustani _dhokna_ or _dukna_, the true derivation becomes apparent.
Had Dr Pott or Dr Paspati had recourse to the plan which I adopted of reading a copious Hindustani dictionary entirely through, word by word, to a patient Gipsy, noting down all which he recognised, and his renderings of them, it is very possible that these learned men would in Germany and Turkey have collected a mass of overwhelming proof as to the Indian origin of Rommany.

At present the dictionary which I intend shall follow this work shows that, so far as the Rommany dialects have been published, that of England contains a far greater number of almost unchanged Hindu words than any other, a fact to which I would especially call the attention of all who are interested in this curious language.
And what is more, I am certain that the supply is far from being exhausted, and that by patient research among old Gipsies, the Anglo-Rommany vocabulary might be increased to possibly five or six thousand words.
It is very possible that when they first came from the East to Europe the Gipsies had a very copious supply of words, for there were men among them of superior intelligence.

But in Turkey, as in Germany, they have not been brought into such close contact with the _Gorgios_ as in England: they have not preserved their familiarity with so many ideas, and consequently their vocabulary has diminished.