Kambojas

They spoke a language similar to Younger Avestan, whose words are considered to have been incorporated in the Aramao-Iranian version of the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription erected by the Maurya emperor Ashoka (r. 268–232 BCE).

They were adherents of Zoroastrianism, as demonstrated by their beliefs that insects, snakes, worms, frogs, and other small animals had to be killed, a practice mentioned in the Avestan Vendidad.

Regardless, the mentioned groups of people were part of the Maurya Empire, being influenced by its politics, culture and religious traditions, and also adhered to ideology of "righteousness" set by Ashoka.

Geographical texts in Sanskrit and the Aṅguttara Nikāya include the Kambojas as one of the sixteen kingdoms of the Indian subcontinent during the lifetime of the Buddha.

Some historians consider it to have founded by Kambojas who had settled in Bengal, a theory which may be supported by the attestation of a Kambojadeśa in the Lushai Hills by the Tibetan book Pag Sam Jon Zang.

Hem Chandra Raychaudhuri proposed that the Kambojas may have travelled to Bengal from the northwestern frontier in the wake of Gurjara-Pratihara conquests during the lifetime of Narayanapala.

Ashoka wanted to use these two languages to convey his religious message to the inhabitants of what is now present-day eastern Afghanistan, around the Gandhara area, approximately between Kabul and Kandahar.

According to Rüdiger Schmitt; "If this hypothesis should prove to be true, we would be able to locate the Kambojas more precisely in the mountains around Ghazni and on the Upper Arghandab.

"[1] The Indo-Aryans considered the Kambojas to be "non-Aryan" (anariya-) strangers with their own peculiar traditions, as demonstrated in a portion of the Buddhist Jataka tales.