257 
1874.] Bajendralala Mitra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers . 
was and was not force, and (ascertaining) that austere fervour is the supreme 
force, he abandoned his prosperous kingdom, and all its brilliant regal splen¬ 
dour, and casting all enjoyments behind its hack, he devoted himself to 
austerity.”* 
This story is repeated in the S'alya Parva, hut with some variations. 
According to it, the occasion of the quarrel was not a hunting excursion fol¬ 
lowed by an entertainment and a desire on the part of Vis'vamitra to possess 
the cow, hut a military expedition against certain Bakliasas, when the 
king’s army encamped near the hermitage of the sage, and destroyed the 
grove around it, and the sage, in a fit of anger, asked the cow “ to create 
terrible S'avaras.” “ The cow so addressed created men of dreadful aspect, 
who broke and scattered in all directions the army of Vis'vamitra.”f 
The story is also given at great length in the first book of the Bama- 
yana, but there is very little in it to show who the Yavanas were. Created 
along with the S'akas, they are both described to be radiant, mighty, enve¬ 
loped in golden armour, dressed in yellow garments, protected with golden 
armour, and armed with swords and shields.£ 
Commentators are of opinion that this story does not refer to the 
origin of the Yavanas as a race, but only recounts the creation of a particu¬ 
lar body of that race for the purpose of overcoming Vis'vamitra. Anyhow 
it is evident that we have in it, under cover of a romantic story, a tale of a 
war between some Brahmans and Kshatriyas, in which the former secured the 
co-operation of certain of their non-Hindu, or outcaste, neighbours, and it 
would he absurd to suppose that the Greeks, whether Asiatic or European, 
ever did come to interpose in such a quarrel. The story refers to very early 
times and to persons who were authors of some of the hymns of the Big Veda, 
and at the time and among them Ionians could not possibly have been 
known, for then they had not yet settled down into a distinct nationality. 
It is doubtless remarkable that we have in this tale a reproduction of the 
Io myth ; for we have here the Yavanas produced by a cow even as Io in 
her bovine metamorphosis produced the Ionians. The coincidence, however, 
is purely accidental. The rivalry of Vas'ishtha and Vis'vamitra is repeatedly 
and prominently adverted to in the Sahhita of the Big Veda, though no men¬ 
tion is there made of the creation of Yavanas to side with any of the con¬ 
tending parties. This rivalry is also noticed in the other Sanhitas, and like¬ 
wise in some of the Brahmanas, but without any reference to the Yavanas. 
The cupidity and oppressive character of Vis'vamitra are the objects of con¬ 
demnation, and as land and cattle were the principal articles of wealth at that 
time, and both were indicated by the same term yo, Puianic mythologists 
# Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, 2nd ed., p. 390. 
f Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, 2nd ed., p. 393. 
% Ramayana, Chapters 51 to 65. 
