2GS 
ltajendralala Mitra— The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers. [No. 3, 
bank of the Indus along the Sulaiman range. At best it is a case of 'post 
hoc propter hoc , which does not in any way solve the question at issue. 
Kalidasa, in the fourth book of the llaghuvaysa, carries the vietorious 
prince liaghu to the country of the Persians (Parasikas), where the prince, 
overpowered by the radiant lotus-like eyes of the Yavana damsels, fought tho 
Persians, and scattered their bearded and moustachioed heads over the earth ; 
his soldiers then spread their carpets under shady vineyards and caroused 
on grape wine. # Here Kalidasa makes the Yavanis the wives of the 
Persians, and, bearing in mind the fact that the Hellenes of the post-Alexan¬ 
drian period did not tolerate any hirsute appendages to the face, and the 
husbands of the Yavanis were all bearded and moustachioed, it is impossible to 
conclude that his Yavanis were “ Greeks and Greeks only.” 
A king of Mithila is described in the third chapter of the Dasaku- 
mara Charita to have laid a scheme for defrauding 1 a Yavana merchant of 
a valuable diamond which he had for sale.f The name of the merchant was, 
according to some MSS., Khaniti, and according to others Svabhiti, but 
Professor Wilson suspects neither is correct. The story cannot be later 
than the seventh century, and at the time a Greek merchant was the least 
likely person to be met with in Tirhut, and Professor Wilson very properly 
takes the circumstance to be a proof of “ the intercourse of foreign traders, 
Arabs or Persians, with India before the Muhammadan conquest.Lassen 
also admits that “ the word Yavana did apply to the Muhammadan Arabians 
at the time of their commerce with India.”§ 
In the Harsha Charita, Bana states that a reader whom he entertained, 
used to recite for his diversion the Yavana-prayata purctna, which Mr. Hall 
justly observes, “ Colonel Wilford would have pronounced to be the Iliad, 
T II II 
fVnifw i 
qfwr<Tq<ft<¥iTT: f% WRJprlTfl II ^y II 
V vj 
II II 
C\ ' 
y ^Ji: i 
f Wilson’s Ed., text p. 111. J Ibid, Preface, p. 10. 
§ Imlisclie Altertliumskundc, p. 730. 
