The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.31

c12.31

middle of the first century B.C. (p. 257 n. 3). The questions to be answered are, where did the author of Part I of the Pali Milinda find the word Yonaka, and why did he use it instead of either of the current terms, Yavana or Yona? Where he found it is not in doubt; for the form 'Ιωνακός, though unknown to classical Greek, existed at this time in the current Hellenistic Greek of the Farther East, one instance being certain and another almost certain. One of Ptolemy's innumerable sources gave him the phrase 'Ιωνακὰ πόλις, 'Greek-town', for a city on the Gulf of Bushire, presumably Antioch in Persis;¹ and the word seemingly occurs again in the Ch'ien-han-shu. The story of Yin-mo-fu who ruled in Yung-kiu in the time of the Han emperor Yuan-ti (48-33 B.C.) is dealt with elsewhere (p. 339); all that need be said here is that the story as Pan-ku gives it must have been taken from a report made by the Chinese general Wen-chung who played a part in it, for no other source for an incident in the remote Paropamisadae seems possible; and Wen-chung can only have got the name Yung-kiu (Jong-k'ut), which is Yonaki, 'Greek-town',² from people on the spot. Yonaka therefore was taken from the current Hellenistic Greek of the time,³ whether from the spoken language or from some Greek writing, which means that in either case the author of Part I of the Milinda knew some Greek. This is confirmed by the fact that the wealthy Indian merchant who called himself a Yonaka in the Nasik inscription was a citizen of the Greek city Demetrias (p. 257) and as such probably knew some Greek also.