1874.] Bajendralala Mitra— The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. 251 
names of countries, and that the terms are tribal names, derived from 
the locale of the several peoples mentioned, the first signifying Ionia or 
Greece. Bearing, however, in mind the early age when the book of Ezekiel 
was written, one would be disposed to fancy that the Phmnicians were the 
people meant and not Greeks, who then certainly had very little maritime 
traffic of their own, and depended a good deal on Phoenician traders for 
supplies of foreign goods. In Daniel viii. 21, x. 20, xi. 2, the references 
are accepted by the authorised translator of the Bible to mean the Macedo¬ 
nian empire, and in Zecliariah x. 13, to be the Graeco-Syrian empire. Again, 
in Ezekiel xxvii. 19, according to Dr. Smith, “ a town in the southern 
part of Arabia (Yemen) whither the Phoenicians traded, is indicated.” He 
adds “ the connexion with Uzal decides in favour of this place rather than 
Greece, as in the Vulgate. The same place may he noticed in Joel iii. 6, 
the parallelism to the Sabseans in verse 8, and the fact that the Phoenicians 
bought instead of selling slaves to the Greeks (Ez. xxvii. 13,) are in 
favour of this view.” # 
Commenting upon the different passages above cited, Dr. Smith ob¬ 
serves : “ From a comparison of these various passages, there can be no 
doubt that Javan was regarded as the representative of the Greek race ; the 
similarity of the name to that branch of the Hellenic family with which 
the Orientals were best acquainted, viz., the Ionians, particularly in the 
older form in which their name appears (Taco), is too close to be regarded 
as accidental, and the occurrence of the name in the cuneiform inscriptions 
of the time of Sargon (about B. C. 709) in the form of Yavnan or Yunan, 
as descriptive of the isle of Cyprus, where the Assyrians first came in con¬ 
tact with the power of the Greeks, further shows that its use was not 
confined to the Hebrews, but was widely spread throughout the East. 
The name was probably introduced into Asia by the Phoenicians, to whom 
the Ionians were naturally better known than any other of the Hellenic 
races, on account of their commercial activity and the high prosperity of 
their towns on the western coast of Asia Minor. The extension of the 
name westward to the general body of the Greeks, as they became known 
to the Hebrews through the Phoenicians, was but a natural process, analo¬ 
gous to that which we have already had to notice in the case of Chittim.”f 
It is unquestionable that in the later writings of the Hebraites and in 
modern Hebrew the word is used to indicate the Greeks, the meaning 
extending from the Asiatic Greeks or Ionians to the Hellenes of Europe ; 
but from the passages above quoted, it is far from being conclusive that in 
the early times of the Genesis the Greeks of Europe were known to the Jews, 
and there is very little to show that Greek colonists had extended to the 
* Ibid, 936. 
f Ibid., p. 935. 
