India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c10.s2.20

c10.s2.20

Goldstücker and Spooner took *Yavanānī* to refer to the Persian cuneiform writing which Keith refutes as highly improbable since there is no evidence to show that the word *Yavana* ever meant the Persians (*J.R.A.S.*, 1915, p. 432). Darius (B. C. 521-B. C. 485) in his Old-Persian Inscriptions refers to the country *Yauna* and to its inhabitants as *Yaunā* (Behistun Inscription, names of the twenty-three provinces), which shows that the terms cannot be taken to mean Persia or the Persians. Most scholars agree in taking them as Ionia and Ionian Greeks. Aśoka likewise uses in his inscriptions the word *Yona* for *Yavana* and not for the Persians. The suggestion that *Yavanānī* was the name of the Armaic writing discovered in a stone inscription at Takshaśila, likewise remains unsupported by any proof. Herodotus mentions a contingent of Indian soldiers in the army of Xerxes fighting in Greece and there were Greek colonists settled in Bactria even before Alexander. Thus Pāṇini's knowledge of the word for Greek writing can be naturally understood.