2G0 Rajendralala Mitra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. [No. 3, 
along with them, must be their neighbours, probably Bactrians. The word 
Madhura is the ancient form of Mathura, and the people of that place 
of tlie name, or Kambi, in the Cambistholi of Arrian; the last two syllables, no doubt, 
represent the Sanskrit ‘sthala,’ ‘place,’ ‘district,’ and the word denotes the dwellers in 
the Kamba or Kambis country,” (Vishnu Purana, II. 182). Elsewhere he adds : “ There 
is an apparent trace of this name in the Canmujis of Kafiristan, who may have retreated 
to the mountains before the advance of the Turk tribes.” (Ibid., III. p. 292.) This 
would give us the northern part of Afghanistan for the locale of Kamboja; and it is borne 
out by the tradition of some of the Kambojas who now dwell in India. As nothing is 
known to Europeans of this remnant of the old race, I shall quote here a part of a letter 
from Babu Sambhuchandra Mukarji, in which he has furnished me an account of this tribe. 
“The Kambolis or Kambohs,” he kays, “ are a small but very well known even to being 
notorious-people scattered in many parts of Upper India, from Benares up to the Panjab, 
and I do not know how far south. There are many families in Audh, and a considerable 
colony in Rohilkhand, Agra, Delhi and the Panjab. There are both Hindu and Musal- 
man Kambohs,—neither in good odour with the rest of the community to which they 
belong. By the Hindus, the quasi-Hindu section is regarded as a sort of Pariah tribe, 
like the Tagas and such like. I call these gwasi-Hindu, because, though in sense clinging 
to the hem of the garments of Hindu society among its lowest rank and file, they hardly 
properly belong to it. Their wealthier members, like those of other low castes, 
try to be respectable by the only means open, namely, conformity to the usages and ways 
of the superior castes and demonstrative subserviency to the latter, though as classes they 
are little inclined to that conformity or to that subserviency. Generally they are independ¬ 
ent of Brahman and Kshatrxya influence, and do not pay deference to the leading castes. 
This may be understood as a protest against the degradation in which they have been 
kept, but the other low castes—the lowest recognized ones—do not behave themselves 
in the same manner. I think the mutual attitude of the Kambohs, Tagas, &c., and the 
rest of the Hindus, is due to the fact of the former being a colony of hardy mountaineers 
from the West. Confining ourselves to the Kambohs, the attitude is a presumption in 
favour of their identity with the outcasted extra-Indian, hostile race of Kamboja men¬ 
tioned by Manu. As we find them, they are a turbulent, stiff-necked, crafty race, and 
as such, more akin to the Afghans, than any of the meek Hindu races of the plains of 
India, wherein they have now been settled for generations. From want of sympathy, as well 
as the strong reflex influence of caste-feeling on Indian Musalmans, the Muhammadan 
Kambohs are a despised set in Muhammadan society. But of course from the different 
religion and manners of the Muhammadans, and the absence among them of the unaltera¬ 
ble barriers which separate class from class, even man from man, in Hindu society, the 
Muhammadan Kambohs are far better ofi* than their Hindu brethren : they cannot possibly 
be degraded like the latter. There is little doubt that if their character had been more 
respectable, they would have been more respected by the other Musalmans, and in so 
many generations as have elapsed since their conversion, their origin might have been 
forgotten, as that of so many other tribes absorbed in Muhammadan society have been. 
But they have retained their original Afghan character in common with their Hindu 
brethren, and as their comparative elevation by their conversion has given them opportu¬ 
nities for education and office to which the others are comparatively strangers, they have 
only added to it all the arts of chicane, flattery, and intrigue. Thus they have risen high, 
like the Lalas and the Kashmiris. Like the Lalas and the Kashmiris, they are esteemed 
