220

THE GREEKS IN INDIA .

that the Sanskrit word Yavana has a much wider applicationthan merely to the Greeks or even to the Bactrians. TheGreek credentials of the Indian embassy to Augustus in 22-20 b.c.survivals were written on skins; a circumstance which perhaps indicatesthe extent to which Greek usage had overcome Brahmanicalprejudices. During the century preceding the Christian era,Scythian or Tartar hordes began to supplant the Grceco-Bactrian influence in the Punjab .

The

ancient

and

modern.

The term Yavana, or Yona, which originally applied to‘Yavanas;’ several non-Brahmanical races, and especially to the Greeks,was also extended to the Sakse or Scythians . It probablyincludes many widely various tribes of invaders from the west.Patient effort will be required before the successive changes inthe meaning of Yavana, both before and after the Greekperiod, are worked out. The word travelled far, and hassurvived with a strange vitality in out-of-the-way nooks ofIndia. The Orissa chroniclers called the sea-invaders fromthe Bay of Bengal, Yavanas, and in later times the term wasapplied to the Musalmans . 1 At the present day, a vernacularform of the word is said to have supplied the local name forthe Arab settlers on the Coromandel coast . 2

1 Hunter’s Orissa , vol. i. pp. 25, 85, and 209 to 232 (ed. 1872).

2 Bishop Caldwell gives Yavanas (Yonas) as the equivalent of theSonagas or Muhammadans of the western coast : Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, 2nd edition , p. 2 (Triibner, 1875).