 Baikunth Nath Sharga argues that, despite the etymological similarities between Kashmiri and Jewish surnames, the Kashmiri Pandits are of Indo-Aryan descent while the Jews are of Semitic descent.After learning about normative Judaism in the 19th century, a group of Jews of India; called the Bene Israel often migrated from villages in Konkan to nearby cities, which included Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Karachi.Based on Bene Israel tradition, after centuries of traveling through Western Asia from Israel, their ancestors migrated to India and slowly assimilated into the surrounding community, while maintaining particular Jewish traditions.