History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c20.10

v1.c20.10

But these Yavanas seem to have preserved their language though not their religion. It is indeed an interesting question whether the Yavana kings of the Panjab spoke Greek. The legends on their coins indeed are in Greek and this clearly shows that they must have spoken their own language. But they were in constant communication with Bactria, Syria and even Greece and their speaking their own language is not strange. But the Yavanas of Āndhra surrounded as they were by Sanskrit-born and Dravidian languages, their own subjects speaking also the same languages could not have preserved their Greek. Colebrooke quoting a writer of this period (8th century) classifies the non-Hindu languages of the time as four in number viz. Yavana, Pārasīka, Romaka and Barbara (Hunter's Orissa Vol. I p. 222). Hunter, however, believes that these Āndhra Greeks had lost all traces of their original language.*