CAMBAY, a native state (Kaira agency) of India, in the Gujarat division of Bombay. It has an area of 35o square miles. Pop. (1931) 87,761. The tribute is £ 1,337. Cambay is entirely an alluvial plain. As a separate state it dates only from about 1730, the time of the dismemberment of the Mogul empire. The present chiefs are descended from Momin Khan II., the last of the gov ernors of Gujarat, who made himself governor of Cambay in 1742. Wheat and cotton are the chief crops. The nawab being a minor, the state was under British administration in 1928.
The town of Cambay had a population in 1931 of 31,877. It is supposed to be the Camanes of Ptolemy and was formerly the seat of an extensive trade and textile manufactures; but, owing principally to the rise of Surat and the silting up of the harbour, its commerce fell away, and the town became unimportant. The spring tides rise upwards of 3o ft. The town is celebrated for its manufacture of agate and carnelian ornaments, of reputation principally in China. There is a cotton mill. Many houses are built of stone (which indicates the former wealth of the city, as the material had to be brought from a distance) ; and remains of a brick wall, 3 m. in circumference, which formerly surrounded the town, enclose four large reservoirs and three bazaars. To the south-east there are extensive ruins of subterranean temples and other buildings half-buried in the sand by which the ancient town was overwhelmed. These temples belong to the Jains, and contain two massive statues of their deities. In 1780 Cambay was taken by the army of General Goddard, was restored to the Mahrattas in 1783, and was afterwards ceded to the British by the Peshwa under the treaty of 1803. It is connected through Petlad with the Bombay, Baroda and Central India railway.