1874.] Rajendralala Mitra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. 
205 
in question having extended to Audh. The logic of such an argument, to 
say the least, is highly unsatisfactory. Cunningham, I understand, over¬ 
comes the difficulty by assuming the ‘ Isamos,’ the river named b} r Strabo, 
to he the “ Isan” nadi between Fathgarh and Kanhpur, and not the 
Yamuna ; hut I do not know the arguments on which this assumption is made 
to rest. The argument about the coin of Menander found at Mathura 
may be placed besides that which would assume a Roman conquest in 
Travancore, because a lot of gold coins of the Cassars have been found 
there. As a matter of fact it is well known that coins of Apollodotus and 
Strata have likewise been found in Mathura, but none of Menander in Audh. 
These two arguments failing, there would be nothing to show that Patanjali 
used the term Yavana to mean “ a Greek and a Greek only.” If we bear in mind 
the facts that Menander came to the possession of the eastern portion of the 
dominions of Eukratides on this side of the Paropamisus, and that according 
to the Vishnu Purana, the Yavana country abutted on the western side of 
the Indus, there will be nothing to object to Menander’s being called a 
Yavana, a sovereign of the country to the west of the Indus, or of the Yavana 
country, without meaning that he was a Greek. It should be added here 
that the term Madhyamika, which has been taken by the critic to mean the 
Buddhist sect of that name, has been also frequently used to indicate the 
people of the middle country, that is, Mathura and its neighbourhood, and 
there is nothing to prove that Patanjali used it in the former, and not in 
the latter, sense. On the contrary, one of the two examples referring to a 
country, the other may be accepted in the same sense. Patanjali, as a 
Hindu, probably did not care much about the history of the Buddhist sect 
of the Madhyamikas, and whoever made war with the Madhyamikas, it may 
be fairly presumed, preferred a country or nation to a religious sect. 
To turn now to the dramatic works which have been appealed to by 
the upholders of the Greek theory. Dushyanta is described in the S'akun- 
tala, as attended by a retinue “ of Yavana women with bows in their hands 
and wearing garlands of wild flowers.” Commenting on this passage, Pro¬ 
fessor Williams says : “ Who these women were has not been accurately 
ascertained. Yavana is properly Arabia, but is also a name applied to 
Greece. The Yavana were therefore either natives of Arabia or Greece, and 
their business was to attend upon the king, and take charge of his weapons, 
especially his bows and arrows.An Amazonian arm-bearer of this de¬ 
scription also appears in the Vikramorvas'i, and Professor Wilson takes her 
to be either a Tartarian or a Bactrian woman. He observes : “A Yavani, 
which is rather inexplicable. The Muhammadan princes had guards of 
African women in their harems, and the presence of female attendants in 
those of the Hindu sovereigns has also been adverted to ; but the term 
* Translation of Sakuntala, p. 35. 
