2G6 
Bajendralala Mitra —The Tavanas of Sanskrit Writers. [No. 3, 
Yavana has been applied by the later Hindus to the Muhammadans ; 
and it is not likely that either Persian or Arabian women ever found their 
way into the inner apartments of Hindu princes, as personal attendants or 
guards. If, as has been supposed, Yavanas formerly implied Greeks, it is 
equally impossible that Greek women should have fulfilled such an office, as 
few could have found their way to India, or even to Bactria ; and those 
would have been, it may be supposed, too highly valued by their country¬ 
men to have been suffered to act as slaves to barbarians. Perhaps Tar¬ 
tarian or Bactrian women may be intended.”* 
I believe few will dissent from this conclusion. Doubtless the Alexan¬ 
drian invasion took place long before the time when the two dramatical works 
here noticed were composed, and their author was perfectly well aware of 
the character of the Greeks ; but it would be doing a grave injustice to Kali¬ 
dasa to say that he so far trangressed the laws of poetical propriety and 
consistency as to attach Grecian damsels to the retinue of Dyuslianta and 
Puraravas, two of the most ancient monarchs of the Indo-Aryan race. He 
could not possibly have so far forgotten the legendary lore of his country as 
to suppose that the Greeks, who first came to India in 327 B. C., could be 
relegated to the Satyayuga or the golden age, without offending the sense 
of propriety and consistency of his readers. 
Supposing, however, for the sake of argument, that he did so forget, and 
that, for the time,highly civilized and luxuriousGreek women were better suited 
to serve as Amazonian armbearers than their rougher and more hardy sisterhood 
of Asia, still the question would arise, was there ever such a supply of Grecian 
damsels in India to afford opportunities to Hindu kings to employ them as their 
body-guards. When Alexander came to India, he had to satisfy himself with two 
Asiatic wives, Boxana the Bactrian, and Stratirathe Persian, the former of 
whom bore him his only son, and his followers could not have been better off in 
this respect. His successors in Asia all made themselves independent, denying 
the supremacy of the Greek sovereignty in Europe. They had, therefore, 
very few opportunities to draw regularly on their mother-country for recruits, 
and consequently they had to depend partly on such adventurers as came in 
quest of fortune, and partly on the Eurasian descendants of the first-comers, 
supplementing them largely by the natives of the country over which they 
reigned, even as the European races did during the last two centuries in 
India. Some Greek women they doubtless had with them; but looking 
to the numerical insignificance of the European women who came to 
India with the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French, and the English 
governors, commanders, officers, soldiers, merchants and adventurers during 
the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, and the large number of 
Eurasians produced by the conquerors, and bearing in mind the fact that 
* Hindu Theatre, II. p. 261. 
