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KAMBOJA.
149 of Punch. The western boundaries of Kamboja must have reached Kāfiristān. Elphinstone found in that district tribes like the 'Caumojee,' 'Camoze,' and 'Camoje whose names remind us of the Kambojas.?'
Kamboja may have been a home of Brāhmaṇic learning in the later Vedic period. The Vamśa Brāhmana actually mentions a teacher named Kāmboja Aupamanyava.? The presence of Āryas (Ayyo) in Kamboja is recognised in the Majjhima Nikāya. But already in the time of Yāska the Kambojas had come to be regarded as a people distinct from the Aryans of the interior of India, speaking a different dialect. We have further changes in later ages. And in Bhuridatta Jātaka5 the Kambojas are credited with savage (Non-Aryan) customs :
ete hi dhammā anariyarūpā Kambojakānam vitathā bahunnan ti.“ These are your savage customs which I hate, Such as Kamboja hordes might emulate,
This description of the Kambojas agrees wonderfully with Yuan Chwang's account of Rajapura and the adjoining countries. "From Lampa to Rājapura the inhabitants are coarse and plain in personal appearance, of rude violent dispositions...they do not belong to India proper,
1 Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Kābul, Vol. II, pp. 375-377; Bomb.Gas. 1.1, 498n; JRAS., 1843,140 : JASB,1874 260n; Wilson, Vishnu p.,11. 292. With the expression assānam āyatanam, 'land of horses,' used by Pāli texts in reference to the Kambojas (DPPN, I. 526. cf. Mbh. vi. 90. 3) may be compared the names Aspasioi and Assakenoi given by classical writers to the sturdy tribes living in the Alishang and Swat valleys in the days of Alexander (Camb. Hist. Ind. 352n).
2 Vedic Index, 1. 127, 138 : Yaska, II. 2. 3 II. 149, 4 II. 2: JRAS, 1911, 801f. 5 No. 543. 6 Jātaka, VI. 208. 7 Cowell's Jātaka, VI. 110.
