Kambojas of Panini: Encyclopedia II - Kambojas of Panini - Panini’s ganas and the Kamboja

Kambojas of Panini - Panini’s ganas and the Kamboja

Panini has also read Kamboja in the ganas to IV.2.133 (Kachhadi ) and IV.3.93 (Sindhuvadi) and has recommended adding affix like aÑ etc to obtain appropriate derivatives to denote the ancestral homeland of Kamboja Kshatriyas (abhijana) and the name of products native to the Kamboja-land as follows:

Kamboja + aÑ => Kaamboja where Kaamboja denotes the ancestral homeland of the Kambojas.

The same term Kaamboja may also denote a horse or an elephant native to Kamboja (Monier Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary)

Similarly plants/herbs like Mashpurni, Hingpurani, Somavalak, Punaag and minerals like silver/gold and conch/shell native to or imported from Kamboja were also called Kaamboja, Kaambojaka or Kaamboji etc (Ancient Kamboja, People and Country, pp 29-31, 255; see entries in Hala.yudha.kosha & Shabd.ratana.samanya.kosha)

The above referred to derivative names for animal/plant/mineral etc, native to or imported from Kamboja, are in accordance with the principles of Linguistics which teaches that a special product imported from a certain country or else native to a certain place gets named after that country/place.

But inspite of Panini's above rules for correct usage of Sanskrit, both Kamboja as well as Kaamboja have yet been used indiscriminately without any change in meaning. We rather see Kaamboja being mostly used in the texts like Ramayana, Mahabharata and all post-Paninian Sanskrit literature in the same sense as Kamboja.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Panini’s ganas and the Kamboja", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki