64 V. A. Smith —On the Civilization of Ancient India. [No. 1, 
greeting used by the women of Surashtra, to be the Greek ^ai'peiv. This 
conjecture is supported by the facts that Greek influence lasted late in 
Surashtra, and that in Byzantine inscriptions ^ai'peiv, written as x € P LV > 
is used as a salutation formula instead of the imperative ^aipe. 
With reference to the political position of the Greeks in India the 
direct transfer into Sanskrit and Pali of the words avpiyi and ^a/Wos 
in the forms surungd (underground passage ; mine), and khalina (= bridle, 
rein, especially the bit of a horse’s bridle) is of interest. 
Merely for the sake of completeness some words may be noticed 
which occur only in dictionaries. Examples of these are yavanapriya, 
1 pepper,’ yavaneshta , ‘ tin,’ ydvana , ‘ incense.’ But in these cases the 
term Yavana may refer, not to the Greeks, but to other foreign nations 
who succeeded them. 
Many articles of commerce have Indian names identical with the 
European, e. g ., hastira , Kao-atTepos; kasturi , Kacrriopeiov; marakata , 
cr/xdpaySos; sringavera, zingiber ; and others. 
But in these cases it is uncertain whether India was the borrower 
or the lender, and in a large number of instances there is no doubt as to 
the Indian origin. Examples are :—oVaXos, upala ; (3ypvXXo<;, veluriya ( vai - 
durya , vaidurya); KapvocfrvXXov, katukaphala ; Kiwafiapi, khinnavari, etc. 
[The Professor then devotes a few words to the Graeco-Buddhist 
sculptures and the origin of coinage in India, but his general observa¬ 
tions are only of a cursory nature, and need not be translated. I have 
already translated his note on the words dramma and dinara. He 
refers to the essay of Stephani, (Nimbus und Strahlenkranz; in the 
Memoires de ’ VAcademic de St. Petersbourg , 6 sei\ t. LX) as establishing 
the probability that the rise of the nimbus in art, which Spence Hardy 
regarded as of eastern origin, is more probably an importation from 
the West. On this question Mr. Senart has no doubt at all, and boldly 
says (page 38) that the classical origin of the nimbus is certain. It is 
quite possible that a close examination of the Buddhist sculptures of the 
Gandhara school with reference to the use of the nimbus may help 
to settle their date. V. A. $.] 
According to Halevy, who has recently republished his views, the 
Indian alphabet itself, as it is first met with in the time of Piyadasi 
(Asoka), is derived from the Greek. But this theory appears to deserve 
little credit, and it is much more probable that the importation of the 
Semitic writing into both India and Greece occurred at the one period, 
and that the great resemblance between several of the most important 
characters is thus to be explained. In any case, the further inference 
impugning the antiquity of Indian literature, which Halevy draws from 
his theory, completely fails, because the oral transmission of ancient 
texts undoubtedly reaches back to very early times. 
