Khambhat (Khambhāt)
Khambhat, also known as Cambay, is a city and the surrounding urban agglomeration in Anand district in the Indian state of Gujarat. It was once an important trading center, but its harbour gradually silted up, and the maritime trade moved to Surat. Khambat lies on an alluvial plain at the north end of the Gulf of Khambhat, noted for the extreme rise and fall of its tides, which can vary as much as thirty feet in the vicinity of Khambat. Khambat is known for its halvasan sweet, sutarfeni, akik stone and kites (patang), and for sources of oil and gas.
Khambat is perhaps the only place in India where the Harappan craft of agate bead making is found in the living tradition. Surprisingly Khambat has no stone deposits; the craft has survived mainly through acquiring stones from the Rajpipla hills, about 200 km away from the city. In the folklore of Khambat, the beginning of the craft is attributed to Baba Ghor, a 1500 AD saint from Ethiopia (Habash) who had led a large contingent of Muslims (Siddi) to settle in the city. However, in the archaeological record the origin of the craft can be traced to nearby Lothal, a Harappan outpost that flourished about 4000 years ago.
Khambat is perhaps the only place in India where the Harappan craft of agate bead making is found in the living tradition. Surprisingly Khambat has no stone deposits; the craft has survived mainly through acquiring stones from the Rajpipla hills, about 200 km away from the city. In the folklore of Khambat, the beginning of the craft is attributed to Baba Ghor, a 1500 AD saint from Ethiopia (Habash) who had led a large contingent of Muslims (Siddi) to settle in the city. However, in the archaeological record the origin of the craft can be traced to nearby Lothal, a Harappan outpost that flourished about 4000 years ago.
Map - Khambhat (Khambhāt)
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Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. (a) (b) (c), "In Punjab, a dry region with grasslands watered by five rivers (hence ‘panch’ and ‘ab’) draining the western Himalayas, one prehistoric culture left no material remains, but some of its ritual texts were preserved orally over the millennia. The culture is called Aryan, and evidence in its texts indicates that it spread slowly south-east, following the course of the Yamuna and Ganga Rivers. Its elite called itself Arya (pure) and distinguished themselves sharply from others. Aryans led kin groups organized as nomadic horse-herding tribes. Their ritual texts are called Vedas, composed in Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit is recorded only in hymns that were part of Vedic rituals to Aryan gods. To be Aryan apparently meant to belong to the elite among pastoral tribes. Texts that record Aryan culture are not precisely datable, but they seem to begin around 1200 BCE with four collections of Vedic hymns (Rg, Sama, Yajur, and Artharva)."
Currency / Language
ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
---|---|---|---|
INR | Indian rupee | ₹ | 2 |
ISO | Language |
---|---|
AS | Assamese language |
BN | Bengali language |
BH | Bihari languages |
EN | English language |
GU | Gujarati language |
HI | Hindi |
KN | Kannada language |
ML | Malayalam language |
MR | Marathi language |
OR | Oriya language |
PA | Panjabi language |
TA | Tamil language |
TE | Telugu language |
UR | Urdu |