The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.36

c12.36

I come to Menander's 500 Yonakas. They are introduced without any explanation of what they were.⁴ That they were really his Council—the ordinary Council of every Hellenistic king, which in another aspect was his 'Friends'—is not in doubt; the number 500 is of course conventional and is fully explained elsewhere (p. 267). The author himself might perhaps have known what Menander's Yonakas were, but the point is that he assumes that his Indian readers will know also, a large assumption. He is supposed to have written in north-western India, and this assumption shows that the allusion to Menander’s Yonakas was written at latest soon after Menander’s death. Even so, it may have puzzled Indian readers, for later times at once felt the need of explanation; in Part II of the Pali text ‘Yonakas’ is replaced by ‘ministers’,¹ and a corresponding expression is used by the Chinese translator of Part I.² What emerges so far, then, is that the writer of Part I of the Pali Milinda knew some Greek and that the reference to the Yonakas was written very soon after Menander’s death; even so, he asks rather much of his Indian readers.