102 ' HISTORY OF CASHMIR. 



Caurava princes, to whom he was a faithful and valuable ally. These occur- 

 rences furnish a satisfactory clue to the close confederacy that subsisted 

 between Crishna and the Pdndava brethren ; his expulsion from Matliurd 

 and foundation of a city on the Malabar coast. Before closing the note, we 

 may advert to the mention of the powerful Yavanddhipa, amongst Jara- 

 sandha's allies or tributaries : he is said to possess boundless authority, 

 and to reign over the west like another Varuna. From this passage, and 

 others not unfrequent, in which respectful mention of the Yavana power is 

 made in the Mahdbhdrat, we may at least infer that the date of its compo- 

 sition was posterior to the Macedonian invasion of India. By the time of the 

 composition of the Sri Bhdgavat, the Yavanas had assumed a new shape, 

 the name being applied to the Mohammedans, and the feelings of the author 

 have evidently influenced his narration. The prince, who in the 'Mahdbhdrat 

 is a powerful king, and is no otherwise distinguished than as one of Jara- 



sandha's many allies, becomes in the JShd gdvat, Yavandsur, a titan or fiend 

 who attacks Crishna of his own accord, and whose assault, combined with 

 the approach of Jarasandha, with which however it is not connected in the 

 way of confederacy or alliance, causes the Demi-god to remove his family to 

 Dwdracd; he himself leads the Demon into a snare, and destroys him. The 

 whole story of the war and the character of Crishna indeed are changed 

 from history to legend in this work, which is manifestly the most modern of 

 the Purdnas. The precise dominion of the Yavanddhipa, said to comprise 

 Marti or Mum and Named, is not easily identified, although many traces 

 of the former name present themselves, as in the Maruca of Ptolemy, a city 

 of Sogdiana, and in the two Merus, Meru al Rudaiid Merit Shajehanabad of 

 Khorasan, of which, the latter is an antient city, its foundation being as- 

 cribed to Tahnuras, or in later times, to Alexander, whilst, as the same with 

 Antiochia or Seleucia, it was at one period the capital of the Bactrian king- 

 dom. If the Maru of the Mahdbhdrat be either of these, therefore, the king 

 of the Yavanas is the Bactrian monarch : indeed the same prince is most 

 j robably intended even if we carry the application of the terms to a more 

 southerly latitude to which they very legitimately appertain. Maru (ire) pro- 

 perly means a desert and ill- watered region ; hence it is applied to the sandy 



