Tribes in Ancient India c5.88

c5.88

In the *Jātakas* we read that the Kāmbojas were a N.W. tribe who were supposed to have lost their original Aryan customs and to have become barbarous.¹ In the *Bhuridatta Jātaka* we find that many Kāmbojas who were not Ariyas falsely held that peoples were purified by killing insects, snakes, frogs, etc.² It is stated in the *Sāsanavamsa*³ that in the 235th year of the Buddha’s Parinibbāna, the Thera Mahārakkhita went to the Yonaka province and established the Buddha’s doctrine in Kāmboja and other places. In other passage of the *Sāsanavamsa*, we find the son of the king of Kāmboja referred to as a Buddhist monk, Tāmalinda, who sailed from Ceylon to India with the Thera Uttarājīva.⁴ Also in the *Sāsanavamsa*, we read of Sirīhamsya, who came from Kāmboja and conquered the city of Ratanapura. Fearing the increasing power and influence of the Buddhist monks, which might become a danger if they turned their minds to secular objects, he determined on a wholesale slaughter. He invited all the great theras of Jeyyapura, Vijayapura and Ratanapura together with their disciples, to meet him in the forest Toṅ-bhī-luṅ; and there he caused them, to the number of 3,000, to be surrounded and slain by his army. Many shrines were demolished and books burnt at the same time.⁵