Kamboj

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindi कम्बोज (kamboj, “Kamboj”) (Urdu کمبوہ‎ (“Kamboh”)), cognate to Punjabi ਕਮ੍ਬੋਜ (kamboj, “Kamboj”).

Toynbee[1], Herzfeld and Walser[2] and Chandra Chakraberty[3] link it to or derive it from Cambyses and/or the region Kambysēnē.

H. C. Seth[4] and others suggest that the word is a compound meaning "owners/rulers of [the region] Kam". H. W. Bailey analyzes the name "Kamboja" as Kam-bauja or Kan-bauja and considers the second part to be related to an Iranian root *baug- meaning "bend; free, loose, deliver, save; possess, rule", related to Sanskrit भुज् (bhuj, “use, possess; rule, govern”); Bailey interprets the first part of the compound as something related to Avestan 𐬐𐬀𐬥‎ (kan, “to long, want”), Sanskrit काम (kāma, “desire, lust”), and the whole compound as "king [ruling] at will".[5][6]

The Anthropological Survey of India suggests a long list of possible cognates, including Cambodia.[7]

Noun

Kamboj (plural Kambojs)

  1. A member of a particular Kshatriya community of people living in northwestern India and in Pakistan and Afghanistan, generally considered to be descended from the Kambojas.
  2. A member of an Indo-Scythian ethnic group of people native to northwestern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, said to be descended from the Kambojas (the Royal Clan of the Sakas or Scythians).
  3. A member of the ruling Indo-European (Scytho-Aryan) group the Kambojas, who settled in northwestern India in the 9th or 10th century BCE.

See also

References
references
  • Arnold J. Toynbee, in A Study of History, volume 7, page 553, observes: " ...the occurrence of the two names (i.e Kuru and Kamboja) in Transcaucasia as well as in and near India—and in Transcaucasia at close quarters—indicates that we have here two more names of Eurasian Nomad peoples who took part, and this in one another's company, in the Volkerwanderung of eighth and seventh centuries B.C; and, if, like so many of their fellows, these Kurus and Kambojas split into two wings whose paths diverged so widely, it does not seem unwarrantable to guess that a central detachment of this pair of migrating peoples may have found its way to Luristan and there have been taken into partnership by Kurus I's father Cispis".
  • 1964, Political and social movements in ancient Panjab (from the Vedic age upto [sic] the Maurya period), pages 105–06, 126 (Buddha Prakash)
  • 1996, Gursharan Singh (editor), the papers of the Punjab history conference of Punjabi University, Patiala →ISBN, →ISBN
  • 1987, Misra, Satiya Deva (editors), Modern Researches in Sanskrit: Dr. Veermani Pd. Upadhyaya Felicitation Volume. Patna: Indira Prakashan
  • 1964, Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli, Giovanni Garbini, A bilingual Graeco-Aramaic edict by Aśoka: the first Greek inscription discovered in Afghanistan, page 17
  • 1993, Watching Cambodia: Ten Paths to Enter the Cambodian Tangle (Bangkok: White Lotus; →ISBN, →ISBN, →ISBN Invalid ISBN, →ISBN Invalid ISBN, page 51
  • 2001, Tai World: A Digest of Articles from the Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter (, ISSN 1326-2777)
  • 2000, Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture, page 257
  1. 1961, Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, volume 7, part 2, pages 550–554
  2. 1968, Ernst Herzfeld, Gerold Walser, The Persian Empire: Studies in geography and ethnography of the ancient Near East, page 345
  3. 1948, Chandra Chakraberty, The prehistory of India: tribal migrations, page 49
  4. The Indian historical quarterly, volume 13, issues 1–4, page 403
  5. 1971, H. W. Bailey, Ancient Kamboja, Iran and Islam, page 67–71
  6. Tavernier, Jan (2007) Iranica in the Achaemenid Period (ca. 550-330 B.C.): Lexicon of Old Iranian Proper Names and Loanwords, Attested in Non-Iranian Texts, Peeters Publishers, →ISBN, page 19
  7. 2003, People of India, volume 37 (Kumar Suresh Singh, Anthropological Survey of India), page 256: "The term is spelt differently as Kamboj (Nehru, 1961: 110), Kamboja, Kambhoja (Majumdar, 1966: 904), Kamoh (Middletone, 1923: 344) and Koombho (Forbes, 1973: 271), Kambos (Ibbetson, 1916). The etymology of the word currently suggests that they are related to the places and people such as Kanbi (Pocock, 1972: 60), Kunbi (Sherring, 1974: 99), Kabui, Kamta, Kamti (Chib, 1982: 102), Kabui (Habib, 1982: 8A), Kama or Kaman, Khambri, Khambayat, Cambay (Habib, 1982: 14A); Kambodge, Kambodia, Kampuchea, and most probably Kambe, Kamo, Kamu, Kambo (Murdock, 1959), Khampa and Kamaon."

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