279 
1874.] Pajendralala MItra —The Yavanas of Sanskrit Writers . 
immediate result of Greek supremacy in North-western India soon 
after Alexander’s invasion, and of direct and indirect commercial intercourse 
between the two nations for some time. Such supremacy and intercourse 
imply that the natives of this country had a name for their foreign rulers ; 
but whether it was the generic term Yavana, or the specific Hellenes, 
Macedonian, or Greek, we know not,—probably, the first, but the Greek 
terms current in the Sanskrit language do not help us to prove it, and it 
is unnecessary therefore to dwell upon the subject. 
As far as we can judge from the facts above set forth, the only 
conclusions which would he consistent and tenable are— 
1st. That originally the term Yavana was the name of a country and 
of its people to the west of Kandahar,—which may have been Arabia, or 
Persia, or Medea, or Assyria,—probably the last. 
2nd. That subsequently it became the name of all those places. 
3rd. That at a later date it indicated all the casteless races to the west 
of the Indus, including the Arabs and the Asiatic Greeks and the Egyptians, 
4th. That the Indo-Greek kings of Afghanistan were also probably 
indicated by the same name. 
5th. That there is not a tittle of evidence to show that it was at any 
one time the exclusive name of the Greeks. 
6th. That it is impossible now to infer from the use of the term. 
Yavana the exact nationality indicated in Sanskrit works. 
These are doubtless very unsatisfactory conclusions to arrive at after a 
protracted disquisition. To the public, so loath to suspend its judgment in 
any one question, nothing is more abhorrent than the admission that it does 
not know; but suspension of judgment pending further enquiry, or admission 
of ignorance, or a cautious reserve, or an attitude of scepticism, if the reader 
chooses to call it so, is, I believe, more conducive to the elucidation of truth 
than hasty generalizations which tend only to enlarge the dominion of error. 
