The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.19

c12.19

The first thing is the word Yonaka, used for a Greek; it is used twice of Greeks generally,⁵ and twice of Menander's 500 Yonakas; except for Milinda Part I the word seemingly only occurs once again in India, in inscription 19 from the Nasik cave (p. 257 n. 3).⁶ The ordinary Sanscrit word for a Greek was Yavana¹. This is the Greek 'ἸάFων, and it certainly came to India through Achaemenid Persia, for in the Old Persian of Darius' inscriptions the form used is always Iauna,² which was also the colloquial form.³ The fact that Hebrew made of it Javan (Yawan) and the Hittites Yevanna has led to a suggestion that it came to India not through Persia but through Semitic Babylon;⁴ but this seems impossible, for in the Babylonian version of Darius' inscriptions the form used is always ia-ma-nu or ia-a-ma-nu,⁵ corresponding to a form Yamanim in a document from Ras Shamra,⁶ and this cannot possibly make Yavana. The Prakrit word, used in the third century B.C. in Asoka's inscriptions, is Yona. I have never seen its relation to Yavana discussed, so it is probably unknown; the obvious supposition is that Yona stands to Yavana as 'Ιων to 'ἸάFων (the relationship of the two Greek words is also unknown)⁷ and that it was derived directly from 'Ιων, for no similar Persian word has been cited and the third century is late for a borrowing from Persia.