In order to avoid the disabilities imposed upon Rabbinite Jews, the Karaites of Russia attempted to prove that they were guiltless of the execution of Jesus because they were descended from the Lost Ten Tribes (specifically the so-called "Khazar" tribe of Simeon and its Levites) and had been settled in the Crimea since the time of Shalmaneser (seventh century B.C.). In particular Abraham Firkovich edited a number of forgeries of inscriptions on tombstones and manuscripts to prove the early date of their settlement in the Crimea. The argument was effective with the Russian government in 1795, when they were exempted from the double taxation imposed upon the Rabbinites, and in 1828, when it obtained for them exemption from military service. From the similar traditions among the Jews of the Caucasus, according to Chorny ("Sefer ha-Massa'ot," p. 585, St. Petersburg, 1884), the Jews of Derbent declared that the Daghestan Jews were those who were carried away by the Assyrians, and that some of them had ultimately migrated to Bokhara, and even as far as China. It is, of course, only natural that the outlying colonies in China, in India, and even in the Sahara should have been at one time or another identified as remnants of the Lost Ten Tribes.
G. Moore, indeed, attempts to prove that the high-class Hindus, including all the Buddhists, are descendants of the Sacæ, or Scythians, who, again, were the Lost Ten Tribes. He transcribes many of the Indian inscriptions into Hebrew of a wonderful kind to prove this contention. Buddhism, according to him, is a fraudulent development of Old Testament doctrines brought to India by the Ten Tribes. The Kareens of Burma, because of their Jewish appearance, their name for God ("Ywwah"), and their use of bones of fowls for divination purposes, are also identified by him and by Mason as descendants of the Lost Tribes.