1874] Bajendralala Mitra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Winters. 2G1 
are to this clay famous for their proficiency in wrestling. Lassen, however, 
for their business capacity and ability in general. They know well bow and where to be 
courtly, and always watch for opportunities to usurp power, the semblance as well as 
the reality. Thus if the Kambohs are contemned, they are likewise feared. Both Kash¬ 
miris and Kambohs are looked upon with suspicion as dangerous. Persecuted from place 
to place, now in sunshine, now in gloom, they are not crushed. If they are banished: 
from one district, as Gulab Sing once banished the Kashmiris, they rise to-the top in 
another, and not long after return to their former district in greater strength than 
ever. 
At the Court of Audli, Izhar Husain and Muzaffar Husein, Kambohs, were ministers, 
and knighted and ennobled. The Kambohs have been known and feared at Murshidabad, 
Rampur, and other Darbars. If there is any distinction to be made between Kashmiris 
and Kambohs for villainy, the voice of the people gives the palm to the latter. No proverb 
is oftener on the lips of the people of Upper India than this:— 
Yoke Afghan, dmoum Kamboh, siyum badzdt Kashmiri. 
“ First the Afghan, second the Kamboh, and the third villain (lit. bastard, villain) 
is the Kashmiri.” 
There is a conflict between the accounts of the origin of the Hindu and Muhammadan 
branches of the tribe. The pretensious Muhammadans, as if in answer to the contempt of 
general Indian society, assert for themselves the most extravagant claims of superiori¬ 
ty. To atone for their actual degradation, they are not content to be noble, they must 
be illustrious—absolutely royal. They derive themselves, to their own satisfaction, from* 
the old Kai sovereigns of Persia. When the Ivais, they say, lost the crown, and were 
ordered to quit the country, they retired to India. As they passed, the people called the 
fugitives Kai drnbah, meaning the Kai party, which became Kamboh. This is clever, and 
phonetically plausible, but nothing more. It is not in the nature of things—it is less in 
the nature of things Indian—that the descendants of royal fugitives from any country, 
of whatever race, should, not receive honors and welcome from all classes of the people. 
If nothing else, their wealth and. dignity, learning and character, would command these.. 
Least of all is it likely that they should, whether they became Hindus or Muhammadans, 
be degraded to that abject situation of pariahliood in which we find, the Kambohs. The 
whole narrative is of a piece with the impudence of the class. Under any circumstances, 
there is the greatest necessity for caution in accepting the accounts of the origin of 
so notorious a people, low in. the social estimation of the rest of society, but lettered 
and able, every second man of whom is a clever secretary, and who have produced many 
literary men. They have irresistible temptation to tamper with their traditions. 
The accounts of the Hindu branch is of course more modest and perfectly credible. 
Both the accounts place the original seat of the race beyond the Panjab, but the Muham¬ 
madans place it far in the west in Persia, while the Hindus are content to come from 
nearer Afghanistan. According to the latter, they were one of the tribes on the Afghan 
frontier... In the tracks of the numerous invasions of Mahmud the Ghaznavide, part of 
their people were forced to become Moslems. Under what circumstances they crossed the 
Five Rivers and moved eastward, is not explained. Nevertheless, the Hindu Kambohs 
seem to give the unvarnished tradition of the race. Some Hindu Kambohs assert that 
they and the Ksliattriyas of the Panjab arc the same people, descended from a common 
stock. Even this may be explained, and is more probable than the royal pretensions of 
the Muhammadaus. 
JLv K 
