No. 36. — 1888.] THE MOORS OF CEYLON. 



259 



whole Greek race. After Alexander the Great's expedition 

 to India at the close of the fourth century B.C., the term 

 Yavana was applied in Indian literature to the Greeks. In 

 the rock inscriptions of Asoka, for instance, Antiochus, the 

 Greek king, whose eastern dominions covered great portions 

 of western Asia, is referred to as " Antiacho, the Yona king " 

 (B.C. 250) ; and Patanjali (B.C. 130) records "that the 

 Yavanas eat lying down." Since the invasions of Alexander 

 and Seleucus, the Ionians had established themselves 

 beyond the Indus, and even gone as far as Oude, for the 

 Sanskrit grammarian just mentioned records that the Yavanas 

 laid seige to that city. They then pushed their way to the 

 Buddhist kingdom of Magadha, and advanced into Orissa 

 as Buddhists, where they founded a Yavana dynasty. Being 

 expelled therefrom in A.C. 473, they moved southwards, 

 overthrew the Andhra kingdom, the capital of which was 

 Warangul (half-way between the Godaveri and Haiderabad), 

 and ruled in that part of the country till A.C. 963, when 

 their downfall occurred amidst a great religious revival which 

 ended in the overthrow of Buddhism and the re-establish- 

 ment of the Saiva faith. From this period the Ionians 

 disappear from Indian history, being most probably absorbed 

 by the war and persecution which characterised the times. 

 But the name Yavana survived as meaning a people who came 

 from the north and brought in new religious rites. " These," 

 says Sir William Hunter, " were the two crucial characteris- 

 tics of Yavanas in the Hindu mind, and in the end they led 

 to the transfer of the name to a people more widely separated 

 by race and religion from the Ionians than the Ionians from 

 the Hindu. For the north was again about to send 

 forth a race of invaders bringing with them a new faith, 

 and destined to establish themselves upon the wrecks of 

 native dynasties and native beliefs. The Musalman invasions 

 of India practically date from the eighth century, when 

 the Arabs temporarily conquered Sindh. The first years 

 of the eleventh century brought the terrible Mahmud 

 Sultan, whose twelve expeditions introduced a new era into 



