1874.] Kijendralala Mitra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. 253 
According to some Sanskrit writers, the word Yavana is derived from 
the root yu ‘ to mix,’ implying “a mixed race, or one in which no distinction 
of caste is observed.”* It may be taken to mean mulattos, such as the story 
of Io would indicate the original Ionians to have been ; but no Sanskrit lexico¬ 
grapher has suggested it. Others derive it from ju “ to be swift,” a swift or 
intrepid race.f Others, again, take it to be a derivative of yoni “ the womb’ 
(of the cow of Vasishtha), or a race born for the purpose of opposing the 
armies of Vis'vamitra. The first radical is the same which occurs in the 
formation of the word yuvan (l young,” originally yuva, and, as already 
stated, the word may be accepted to indicate the youthful or new race of 
Asiatic Greeks as opposed to the “ Graichoi” or the old race of European Greece. 
Should this derivation be accepted, it would not be necessary to suppose that 
the word Yuvan travelled from Asia Minor to India ; on the contrary, its 
similitude with the Latin juvenis , Saxon long, Dutch jong, Swedish and 
and Danish ung , Gothic yuggs, and Zend jiivan, would indicate it to be 
one of those domestic terms which travelled witli the Aryans in their various 
migrations from their common home in Central Asia. 
o 
The word, as a tribal designation, seems to have been well known and 
current in Sanskrit from a very early period. Panini, in his great work on 
Sanskrit grammar, gives it in the form of Yavandm, as an example to 
show the use of the affix dnuk to indicate the writing of the Yavanas. X 
This implies that it was a current word at his time, at least nine or 
ten centuries before the commencement of the Christian era according to 
the calculation of the late Dr. Goldstiicker. How long before that time it 
was familiar to the Brahmanic race as a tribal name, we know not; but it 
may safely be concluded that it was not in the sense of the Greeks, whether 
Asiatic or European, that it was used by Panini and his predecessors. 
According to the most recent researches on the subject, the art of writing 
was not introduced into Greece before the seventh century B. C., and Pani- 
ni could not possibly, therefore, refer to Greek writing two or three centuries 
before its formation. If we accept Professor Max Muller’s date for Panini, 
i. e. the early part of the sixth century B. C., it would still be presump¬ 
tuous to believe that Panini had come to know of the introduction of 
writing into Greece so soon after the occurrence. Dr. Goldstiicker ob¬ 
serves that “ it denotes the writing of the Persians, probably the cuneiform 
writing which was already known before the time of Darius, and is peculiar 
| 
•f In this case the word should he written with j instead of y. When implying a 
horse, this is the correct spelling; Raghunandana enjoins that even when implying a race 
of men, the word should also he written with j and not with y. 
J Panini IV, I, 49. 
