The Samvedi are descended from a Brahmin sub-caste that settled around Bombay, or more exactly around the then entrepots of Thane, Kalyan and Sopara, for Bombay did not exist then. They adopted Christianity as a result of missionaries sent by the Portuguese who had conquered the area from the Arab controlled Sultanate of Cambay in present-day Gujarat State. They have existed in the Konkan from at least 500 B.C., so they predated any Jewish refugees-settlers. Yet they have retained their dialect of Konkani as their mother tongue, unlike the other "Norteiro people" (natives of the former Portuguese "Court of the North", centered around Baçaim) who were forced to adopt Marathi by the Maratha conquerors under Baji Rao Peshwa, and who renamed themselves "East Indian" about the 1870s.
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