Encyclopedias On the Kambojas
Dr. Samar Abbas, Aligarh, India.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the lack of
coverage of Kamboja history in standard encyclopedias, and to uncover the
consequent ignorance regarding this topic worldwide. One article in a
hard-to-find encyclopedia is presented as a basis for further encyclopedia
articles. Strategies for propagating Kamboja culture and redressing this
imbalance are discussed, with pan-Scythianism and pan-Iranism identified as
the main movements with which Kambojas must align in future.
Encyclopedia Britannica et al.
Encyclopedias provide a standard reference for the history
of a community, for persons both inside and outside the ethnic group in
question. Thus, the younger generation of Kambojas often desire to learn
about their ancestors' deeds, and often resort to encyclopedias for this
noble purpose. Furthermore, when Kambojas present their history to members
of other communities, these persons often desire to confirm at least the
kernel of Kamboja claims by resorting to standard encyclopedias. It is hence
with grave concern that all Kambojas must view the virtual absence of their
community's important history from virtually all major encyclopedias.
Several encyclopedias do not have an entry for Kambojas, and indeed many do
not contain a single instance of the word 'Kamboja'. In this category belong
the Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia 2002), the MSN Encarta Encyclopedia
(http://encarta.msn.com), the Encyclopedia of the Orient (http://i-cias.com/e.o/)
and the Probert Encyclopedia (Probert 2003). Even educated people perusing
these reference works would end up with the impression that the Kambojas
died out centuries ago. Worse still, the most commonly used reference work,
Encyclopedia Britannica, is also woefully inadequate in its coverage of
Kamboja history. Kamboja is only briefly mentioned in the following short
paragraph:
"Kamboja adjoined Gandhara. Originally
regarded as a land of Aryan speakers, Kamboja soon lost its important
status, ostensibly because its people did not follow the sacred
Brahmanical rites. a situation which was to prevail extensively in the
North as the result of introduction of new peoples and cultures through
the process of invasion, migration and ... Kamboja was noted for its
horses, which came from Central Asia, and were traded to toher parts of
India." (Britannica 1990, Vol.21, p.34)
This brief mention omits the bulk of Kamboja history, such
as the Kamboja migrations to Tibet and Cambodia, the latter indeed being a
country named after the Kambojas. It does not mention the fact that the
modern-day Kamboh community of Punjab is descended from the ancient Kambojas.
Nor does it mention the connection to Cambyses. Compounding these mistakes,
it gives the impression that the Kambojas originally followed Brahminical
rites, only to discard them later. There is of course, no evidence for this,
for the Kambojas are a division of the Scythic or East Iranic branch of the
Iranic race, and consequently never followed Brahminical rites at any point
of their history. The enforced Brahmanization of Kambojas, and their
consequent degradation to the status of sub-humans, occurred at a much later
period in Kamboja history, during the Puranic Dark Ages under the tyrannical
Gupta dynasty.
Hindu World: A Case Study
With such grave omissions, it is encouraging to note that
at least one encyclopedia - "Hindu World" - has presented an entry on
Kambojas. This article would, however, be out of reach for most Kambojas.
and hence this entry is reproduced here to partly offset the lacunae in
Encyclopedia Britannica:
"Kāmboja, an ancient tribe of
north-western India frequently mentioned in ancient texts, although not in
the Rigveda itself. In Manu they are classed with the Sudras, in the
Mahabharata with the barbarians, and the Jātakas say they observed
non-Brahmin customs. They were among the tribes opposed to king Sagara,
who forced them to shave their heads as a token of submission and Pāṇini
refers to them as muṇḍa, `bald'. They were Kaurava allies in the battle of
Kurukshetra, and their king Sudakshina displayed great bravery and prowess
in the field until shot dead by Arjuna.
The Kāmbojas are variously said to have
belonged to Khorasan, Balkh, Bokhara, Afghanistan, Kafiristan, Kashmir and
Tibet, with their capital at an unidentified place called Dvārka, a name
with Maga associations. They were frequently listed with the Gandhāra,
Yavana, Malla and Śaka peoples. They may indeed have been of Perso-Mongolian
stock, although they spoke a dialect midway between Avestic and Vedic.
Attempts have been made to connect the name Kāmboja with the Persian
Cambyses (Old Persian Kambujia).
Aśoka sent missionaries to the Kāmbojas
and recorded their conversion to Buddhism in a rock edict. A branch of the
Kāmbojas seems to have migrated eastwards along the Himalayan foothills,
hence their notice in the Tibetan and Nepali chronicles. Later they
entered the Gangetic plains and by the 9th century AD came to conflict
with the Pālas of Bengal. In the 10th century Pāla rule was terminated by
the Kāmbojas who set up one of their chiefs as king. Kāmboja rule in
Bengal lasted until they were deposed by resurgent Pālas in 980. The
descendants of the Kāmbojas are still said to be found in North Bengal.
[I., p.8]
- I. B.C.Law, Tribes of Ancient India,
Poona 1943.
- II. Raychaudhuri, Pol. Hist of Ancient India, Calcutta, 6th ed.
1953."
(Walker 1968, Vol.I: A-L, p.520)
This entry does cover the migration of Kambojas into
Tibet, and their conquest of Bengal. Kamboja laypersons can take this
article as a short first-level, authoritative encapsulation of their
history.
Hobson-Jobson on Camboja
However, while being the best summary of the encyclopedias
surveyed for this article, the Hindu World entry is far from satisfactory,
omitting entirely the migration of Kambojas to Cambodia. Such an omission is
difficult to explain, for even the old Anglo-Indian Hobson-Jobson mentions
this fact:
CAMBOJA, n.p. An ancient kingdom in the
eastern part of Indo-China, once great and powerful: now fallen, and under
the 'protectorate' of France, whose Saigon colony it adjoins. The name,
like so many others of Indo-China since the days of Ptolemy, is of
Sanskrit origin, being apparently a transfer of the name of a nation
and country on the N. W. frontier of India, Kamboja, supposed to have been
about the locality of Chitral or Kafiristan. Ignoring this, fantastic
Chinese and other etymologies have been invented for the name. In the
older Chinese annals (c. 1200 B.C.) this region had the name of Fu-nan;
from the period after our era, when the kingdom of Camboja had become
powerful, it was known to the Chinese as Chin-la. Its power seems to have
extended at one time westward, perhaps to the shores of the B. of Bengal.
Ruins of extraordinary vastness and architectural elaboration are
numerous, and have attracted great attention since M. Mouhot?s visit in
1859; though they had been mentioned by 16th century missionaries, and
some of the buildings when standing in splendour were described by a
Chinese visitor at the end of the 13th century. The Cambojans proper call
themselves Khmer, a name which seems to have given rise to singular
confusions (see COMAR). The gum Gamboge (Cambodiam in the early records [Birdwood,
Rep. on Old Rec., 27]) so familiar in use, derives its name from this
country, the chief source of supply." (Yule & Barnell 1903: Camboja entry)
Taken together, the Hobson-Jobson and Hindu World
encyclopedia entries provide a basic summary of Kamboja history. In
particular, Hobson-Jobson mentions the Cambodia-Kamboja connection.
Some Gross Deficiencies
The above three encyclopedia entries from Encyclopedia
Britannica, Hindu World and Hobson-Jobson all contain numerous omissions.
While the 19th-century editors of Hobson-Jobson are likely to have been
genuinely unaware of Kamboja history, such omissions are less pardonable on
the part of Hindu World, and even less so in the case of Encyclopedia
Britannica. The Hindu World encyclopedia has the largest coverage, but is
still deficient in many respects.
Thus, the term "Perso-Mongolian" is unfortunate, for it
was invented by Benjamin Walker himself and is almost a self-contradiction.
The Persians are, like the Sakas and Mughals, a branch of the Iranic race.
They are thus dolichocephalic (long-headed), leptorrhine (possessing long,
thin-nose), tall, fair-skinned, with long black hair. On account of skeletal
similarity with Nordics, some anthropologists prefer the name
Nordic-Iranian. The Mongols, however, were brachycephalic (round-headed) and
largely platyrrhine (flat-nosed). To create an imaginary category called
Perso-Mongolian would thus be tantamount to creating such hallucinations as
Nordic-Negroid or Nordic-Mongolian.
Moreover, the article appears to cast doubt on the
"attempts" to connect Cambyses with Kamboja. This despite the uncontestable
fact that it has been common for various provinces to be named after
sovereigns. Thus, Georgia in North America was named for George II, Maryland
was named after Queen Mary, Louisiana after King Louis XIV, Rhodesia in
Africa after Cecil Rhodes, Columbia in South America after Christopher
Columbus and Bolivia was named after Simon Bolivar. Why should we be so
surprised to find a province named after Cambyses, Shahanshah of the Iranian
Empire under the Achaemenid Dynasty and the greatest monarch of his age? Why
should we then deny that the Columbians, Georgians, Bolivians and Kambojas
are thus linked, not by birth, but by history, to some of the greatest men
who ever lived?
Related to this mistake is an attempt to create confusion,
claiming that Kamboja "was variously located" in Tibet (Ka-po-tsa),
Afghanistan, and Khorasan, giving the impression that it was not known where
Kamboja was. This is of course an entirely unnecessary controversy, for it
is only natural for emigrants to name various localities in new colonies
after their mother country. Thus, the Anglo-Saxons founded an "England" on
the British Isles, a "New England" in North America, a "New England Mountain
Range" located in Australia, and indeed an "East Anglia" located within the
first "England" mentioned above. The same happened with the Kambojas, who
migrated across the world, conquering vast territories across Asia. This is
the reason why we find so many regions bearing variants of the name Kamboja,
from Cambodia in Indo-China to Cambay in Gujarat and Ka-po-tse in Tibet. Of
course, only a schoolboy would be puzzled by the numerous Englands located
across the globe, or the numerous Kambojas located across Asia.
Another mistake is found in Hobson-Jobson, which makes the
blunder of providing a Sanskrit etymology for Kamboja. The word is of Iranic
origin, related to the mighty King Cambyses of the Achaemenid dynasty, and
was only borrowed into Sanskrit much later. A Sanskrit etymology is ruled
out because, while the lexical and grammatical structure of Sanskrit is of
course largely Indo-European, the vocabulary of Sanskrit is overwhelmingly
of Dravidian and Semitic origin. Thus, a famous Indologist notes:
"It is a fact that Sanskrit borrowed two-thirds of its
vocabulary from Tamil and became an affluent' language." (Madhivanan 1981,
p.76)
In this respect Sanskrit is similar to Greek, for the
vocabulary of both Indo-European languages is largely of non-Indo-European
origin. Hence, Sanskrit cannot be the source of any large fraction of
Iranian words, for Iranic languages are purely Iranic and do not contain
Dravidian or Semitic word-roots.
Tibet: Kambojas and Licchavis, or A Sample of Omitted
Kamboj History
One of the aspects of Kamboj history which the above
articles only touch upon is the crucial role they played in the history of
Tibet. Indeed, the enterprising Kambojas founded a Kamboja in Tibet:
"In conclusion I want to point out that
Tibetan tradition identifies the Lushai Hill tracts between Bengal and
Burma with Eastern Kāmboja [16] [16. The Tibetan work, Pag-sam-jon-zang,
See EI, vol.XII, pp.150ff ]. If this identification can be maintained,
then my theory expressed elsewhere that the Kāmbojas possibly came from
the East may not sound altogether absurd." (Ray 1939, p.511)
The Kambojas also ruled Bengal for a time:
"The editor of the grant [Irda copper
plate grant discovered at, Balasore distt, Orissa], as well [as] Dr.
Majumdar were at first inclined to accept these rulers as belonging to
different branches of the Kambojas, a section of which is referred to as
ruling in Gauda by a pillar inscription amongst the ruins of Bāṇgaḍ, in
the district of Dinajpur in North Bengal. 6 [6. Dynastic History of
Northern India, vol.3, p.308 ] (Ray 1939, p.508)
One of the reasons why the Kambojas chose to enter Tibet
have been supplied by the great scholar Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana, who has
proven that the ruling caste of Tibet - the Licchavis - was of Iranic origin
and hence close kin of the Kambojas. It hence is only natural that the
Kambojas should choose to migrate to Tibet. The conclusions of Vidyabhusana
are so striking that they are best reproduced in his own words. Thus, after
noting that, "In my humble opinion the
Licchavis were a Persian tribe, whose original home was Nisibis, which they
left for India and Tibet in the 6th century BC and 4th century BC,
respectively. " (Vidyabhusana 1906, p.78) and recalling that
"Arrian, who, in his Indika
distinctly says that the Nysaioi (the inhabitants of Nysa or Nisibis) were
not an Indian {p.79} race." (Vidyabhusana 1908, p.78-79), he goes on to
note that:
"
According to Pag-sam-jon-zang, Gyal-rab-sal-wahi-me-long11
and other Tibetan books, the earliest Kings of Tibet from Nya-thi-tsau-po
downwards belonged to the Li-tsa-byi race. There is, no doubt, that Li-tsa-byi
is only a modified form of Licchavi. The first King of Tibet was
Nya-thi-tsan-po, who was a wanderer from a foreign country.
The exact date of his arrival in Tibet is unknown, but from
Deb-ther-sṅon-po and other Tibetan records it appears that he lived
between the 4th and 1st centuries BC. It is probable that during the
occupation of Sogdiana 12 and the neighbouring places by
Alexander the Great, the Bactrian Greek Kings and subsequently the
Scythians (the Yue-chi) about 150 BC, some Persian people from Nisibis
(off Herat) migrated to Tibet into the Himalayan regions, where they
established a monarchial system of Government on the model of the
Government in Persia."
11. Compare Alexander Csoma de Koros'
Tibetan Grammar, p.194. As books in Tibet were written long after
the intercourse of that country with India had been opened,
the Litsabyi Kings of Tibet are
often mentioned as having originally come from Vaisāli in India. As a
matter of fact the Licchavis of Vaisāli and Tibet are collateral
branches of a Persian race in Nisibis (off Herat).
12. Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., Vol.XXII, p.246.
(Vidyabhusana 1908, p.79)
The most convincing proof of the immigration of Kambojas
into Tibet is provided by the characteristically Irano-Aryan custom of
exposing the dead:
"The
custom of exposing the dead to be devoured by wild animals, as it
prevailed in Vaisāli and is still found in Tibet, was, I believe,
introduced into those countries from Persia by the Licchavi immigrants.
It is hardly necessary to add that the practice
of exposure of the dead is widely followed in Persia and its dependancies,
including Nisibis." (Vidyabhusana 1908, p.80)
The round-headed Vedic Indo-Aryans, by contrast, cremate
their dead. The crucial role played by the Kambojas and their Licchavi
relatives in the foundation of Tibetan civilization are only one aspect of
Kamboja history which is not contained in the standard encyclopedias. It is
hence imperative to formulate some strategies to undo the damage done to
Kamboja history.
Strategies for Kamboja Mobilization
The almost universal omission of Kambojas and their
history by important encyclopedias is a grave mistake which must be
rectified as soon as possible. This sad state of affairs has contributed to
widespread ignorance about Kamboja history, even amongst Kambojas
themselves. A very important task for Kamboja organizations is hence to
lobby various encyclopedias to include entries on Kamboja history.
Encyclopedia Iranica (http://www.iranica.com) could be a good
starting-point, and the other reference works cited above should also be
targetted in this regard. Mass emails, signature campaigns, letters and the
internet can perform wonders.
This struggle will be greatly benefited through the
skillful choice of permanent allies. In this respect, there are two
ideologies the Kambojas should support: pan-Scythianism and pan-Iranism.
Since the Kambojas are of Scythic stock, other Saka populations form natural
permanent allies. Hence, the Jats (Getae, Goths), Aroras (Arattas), Gehlotes
(Galatians) and indeed, all Punjabis, are natural friends for Kamboja
resurgence. The Rajputs, Musalman Sindhis, Sikhs (Sakas), Dardic Kashmiris
and Mughals or Urdu Muslims, are also largely Scythic, and hence potential
sympathisers. Rajputs are Sauras or Sun-worshippers, and hence practice the
same primordial Iranic religion as the Kambojas. A Kamboja-Rajput alliance
is hence natural, as is a Kamboja-Sikh front. Furthermore, the Mughals in
particular are especially numerous across South Asia, numbering more than
200 million souls, and consequently in possession of considerable economic
and political muscle power. As an example, the Mughal infotech baron Azim
Premji of Wipro is one of the wealthiest men on earth, and the Mughals
dominate, along with their Scythic Punjabi kinsmen, the Iranic military
state of Pakistan. Emphasis on the common Scythic and Iranic heritage of
Mughals and Kambojas can hence provide significant steam power for the
nascent Kamboja renaissance.
Furthermore, the Scythians represent the East Iranic
branch of the Iranic or Irano-Aryan race. Thus, outside the closer circle of
Saka blood-brothers, the Kambojas can reach out to the wider international
Iranic community as well. Above all, the Persians, Kurds, Pashto or Pathans,
and the Tajiks are close kin of Kambojas. This last point is very important,
for a pan-Iranianist Kamboja cultural movement can obtain the support of the
powerful governments of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan along with their
significant financial muscle. Given the welter of competing nationalities in
India fighting for an ever-decreasing share of limited historical funds, it
would be wise for the Kamboja community to search for richer pastures to
preserve their heritage. Transient and illusory borders of temporary
nation-states should not be treated as any hurdle in this regard.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Prof. Shireen Moosvi, Prof.
Qazi Afzal Hussain and Prof. Irfan Habib (Aligarh) for fruitful discussions.
Thanks also due to Deepak Kamboj, Kamboja Mahasabha, Abbas Atrvash , Farrokh
A. Ashtiani (http://www.PersianParadise.net) and Fatema Soudavar
Farmanfarmaian for their kind encouragement.
Encyclopedias
Britannica 1911: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 ed.,
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org.
Britannica 1990: Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed.,
Chicago, 1990, http://www.britannica.com
Columbia 2002: "Columbia Encyclopedia," 6th ed.,
Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 2002,
http://www.bartleby.com/65.
Probert 2003: "The Probert Encyclopedia", Probert
Publishing, 5 Longcroft Close, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 8XG, England,
http://www.probert-encyclopedia.co.uk.
References
Madhivanan 1981: "Pavanar: a Pioneer in Tamilology"
by R. Madhivanan, J. of Tamil Studies, vol. 19 (June 1981) p.73-80.
Ray 1939: "New Light on the History of Bengal", Dr.
H.C.Ray, The Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol.XV, No.4 (Dec.1939) p.507-511.
Vidyabhusana 1908: "Persian Affinities of the Licchavis"
by Prof. Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana, The Indian Antiquary, Vol.XXXVII, March
1908, p.78-80; Swati Publishers, 34, Central Market, Ashok Vihar,
Delhi-110052, reprint 1985, Rs.600.
Walker 1968: "Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of
Hinduism", by Benjamin Walker, Vol.I: A-L, p.520; George Allen & Unwin
Ltd., Ruskin House, Museum St., London 1968 (2 vols.).
Yule & Burnell 1903: "Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of
colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms,
etymological, historical, geographical and discursive." by Henry Yule &
A.C.Burnell, Murray, 1903, reprinted Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1985,
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/260/
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