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Tribes in Ancient India c35: Chapter XXXI. The Yonas

Tribes in Ancient India c35

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Chapter XXXI. The Yonas

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The Yonas or Yavanas, literally ‘Ionians’, a people or peoples of Greek descent, may be traced in Indian literature and inscriptions¹ from the third century B.C. to the second century A.D. They were ‘manifestly a factor of no small importance in the political history of Northern and Western India’.²

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¹ *Indian Culture*, Vol. I, pp. 343 foll.

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² *Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I, p. 225.

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In the *Mahābhārata* we find them taking part in the Bhārata War at Kurukṣetra as allies of the Kurus along with other peoples of North-Western India like the Kāmbojas, Śakas, Madras, Kaikeyas, Sindhus and Sauvīras.³ Indian tradition, however, regards them as aliens or outcastes. Thus the *Sūtras* mention the Yavanas (Greeks) as the most esteemed of foreigners, but all Yavanas are regarded as sprung from Śūdra females and Kṣatriya males. Gautama says that this view is held by some.⁴ The *Rāmāyaṇa*⁵ refers to the struggles of the Hindus with mixed hordes of Śakas and Yavanas (cf. *Śakān Yavanamiśritān*). In the Kiṣkindhyā Kāṇḍa (IV, 43, 11-12), Sugrīva places the country of the Yavanas and the cities of the Śakas between the country of the Kurus and the Madras and the Himālayas.⁶ In the *Mahābhārata*, the Yonas or Yaunas are classed with other peoples of Uttarāpatha or Northern India like the Kāmbojas, Gandhāras, Kirātas and Barbaras.⁷ In the *Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa*, we also find a list of peoples where the Gabalas or Yavanas are classed with some other people of Northern or North-Western India like the Gandhāras, Sindhu-Sauvīras and Madrakas. Instead of Gabalas, the *Vāyu* and the *Matsya Purāṇas* read Yavanas which seems to be the correct reading.⁸ The Yonas or Yavanas thus seem to be one of the ancient tribes settled in some part of India. A Yona or Greek State is, therefore, mentioned along with Kamboja in the *Majjhima Nikāya* (II, 149) as flourishing in the time of Gautama Buddha and Assalāyana.¹

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³ Ibid., p. 274.

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⁴ Gautama *Dharmaśāstra*, IV, 21; *Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I, 240 f.n.

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⁵ I, 54, 21.

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⁶ *Political History of Ancient India* (4th Ed.), p. 3.

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⁷ Cf. *Uttarāpathajanmānaḥ Kīrtayiṣyāmi tān api Yauna Kāmboja Gāndhārāḥ Kirātā Barbaraiḥ saha*. Mbh., XII, 207, 43.

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⁸ Cf. *Gāndhārā Yavanaścaiva Sindhu-Sauvīra-Madrakāḥ* (*Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa*, Chap. 57, 36).

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¹ Cf. *Yona Kambojesu . . . dveva vaṇṇā, ayyo c’eva dāsoca*.

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The *Milinda-Pañho* refers to the land of the Yonas as the place fit for the attainment of *Nibbāna* (Trenckner ed., p. 327). The *Mahāvastu* speaks of the assembly of the Yonas where anything which was decided was binding on them (Vol. I, p. 171). Hence D. R. Bhandarkar in his *Carmichael Lectures*² observes that there is nothing strange in Pāṇini flourishing in the sixth century B.C. and in his referring also to *Yavanānī*, the writing of the Greeks. When Alexander invaded India he found a large number of autonomous tribes and principalities in the North-Western Frontier Province and the Punjab. Among these we find mention of the Nysaeans forming a small hill-state with a republican constitution. They had Adouphis then as their President and they had a Governing Body of three hundred members. Holdich in discussing the site of Nysa³ shows that the lower spurs and valleys of Koh-i-Mor are where the ancient city of Nysa once stood. According to Bhandarkar,⁴ Nysa was situated between the Kophen and the Indus. In the Fifth Book of Arrian’s work,⁵ we find two relevant passages in this connection. Arrian says, ‘The Nysaeans are not an Indian race, but descended from the men who came into India with Dionysus.’⁶ The deputies of Nysa, who waited upon Alexander, themselves told the Macedonian monarch that their city was founded by Dionysus; for Dionysus, the Greeks believed, had gone conquering across Asia, at the head of his revellers, in the old heroic days.

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‘The Greeks’, Bevan says,⁷ ‘always experienced a keen joy of recognition, when they could connect foreign things with the figures of their own legends, and they were delighted with the suggestion.’ In the legend the name Nysa was specially connected with Dionysus—it was the name of his nurse, or of the place where he was born or of his holy hill—and the name of this little town in the Hindu Kush, as it was pronounced to Alexander, had a similar sound. Again the legend said that Dionysus had been born from the thigh (*mēros*) of Zeus, and a neighbouring summit, the Greeks discovered, was called *Meru*. When, moreover, the Greeks saw the sacred plants of the same god, viz. vine and ivy (which grew nowhere else in the land of the Indians), running wild over the mountain, as they knew them at home, no doubt could be left. So hostilities with these interesting kinsmen could not be thought of, and the Nysaeans themselves joined with Alexander. Three hundred of them on their mountain horses joined the army of the Yavana king and followed him to battle in the plains of the Punjab.¹ The evidence furnished by Arrian’s account of Nysa shows that Nysa was a Greek colony before the advent of Alexander to India.² In the inscription of Aśoka,³ we find mention of the Yonas along with Kāmbojas.⁴ The question here arises—Who were these Yonas? Bhandarkar in his *Carmichael Lectures*, 1921 (pp.

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28ff.), points out that it is impossible to identify the Yonas of Rock Edict XIII with the Greeks of Bactria because the same edict was promulgated when Antiochus Theos, King of Syria, was living, his name being actually specified therein. In Aśoka’s time Bactria was included in the Syrian empire of Antiochus Theos. We learn from Greek historians, Trogus, Justin and Strabo, that it was Diodotus who first made Bactria independent. He was a Satrap of this province under Antiochus Theos. The death of Antiochus probably caused disturbance when Diodotus made himself independent in Bactria. So the Yonas of the Aśokan inscription are to be located elsewhere. Bhandarkar therefore concludes: ‘I suspect that it has to be identified with Aria or Arachosia which were the two provinces ceded by Seleucuos to Chandragupta and which must have been inherited intact by Aśoka. I admit it is not possible to locate these Yonas exactly, but this much is certain that they were outside the kingdom of Antiochus Theos, and lived in Aśoka’s empire in a territory adjoining Gandhāra but outside India.’⁵ Bhandarkar⁶ therefore holds the view that in all likelihood, the Yavanas of Rock Edict XIII must have come and settled in large numbers in some outlying province of India long before Alexander. Numismatic evidence also lends support to such a view. Coins similar to those of the earliest type of Athens are known to have been collected from the north-west frontiers of India.

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They bear head of Athena on the obverse and owls on the reverse.⁷ These owls of Athens have been picked up in Southern Arabia Felix. But none of the owls found in the east are of the types known from Athens. The coins found in Arabia might have travelled there as a result of commercial intercourse, for they are generally counter-marked on the obverse with Sabaean letters or are scratched on the reverse with a Sabaean monogram. Bhandarkar argues when a foreign money for the first time comes into circulation along with the native coinage of a country, all the new specimens are tested, and those, which are found not deficient in weight or quality of metal, are sanctioned by marking them with an official stamp which may consist of a single letter or symbol. These official stamps which are found on the owls of Athens, discovered in South Arabia, are conspicuous by their absence on those found on the frontiers of India. The practice of putting such counter-marks on coins was not unknown in or near India also, for the silver Persian sigloi which were current in the Punjab bear Indian counter-marks.¹ When there is no counter-mark, it is not reasonable to say that they were brought there in course of trade. Bhandarkar² therefore concludes: ‘The natural inference must be that they were native to some outlying district of India which was peopled by the Yavanas or Greeks.

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And as the original owls of Athens have been assigned to *circa* 594-560 B.C., a Greek colony, it is possible to infer, may have been established near India about 550 B.C.’ Ray Chaudhuri³ also notes that the exact situation of the Yona territory has not yet been determined. In the *Mahāvaṃsa* (XII) we find that the Thera Mahārakkhita was sent to the country of the Yonas. This work also refers to its chief city, Alasanda, which Geiger identifies with the town of Alexandria founded by the Macedonian conqueror near Kabul.⁴ Not only the Yonas are mentioned in the inscriptions of Aśoka, we also find a Yavana official or a vassal Yavanarāja called Tushāspha ruling as governor of Surāṣṭra with his capital at Girinagara (Girnar) during the days of Aśoka, as we learn from the Junāgadh Rock Inscription of Mahākshatrapa Rudradāman. Vincent Smith argues that the form of the name shows that the Yavanarāja must have been a Persian. But Ray Chaudhuri contends that if Greeks and other foreigners adopted Hindu names there is no wonder that some of them assumed Iranic appellations. There is, then, no good ground for assuming that Tushāspha was not a Greek, but a Persian. After the death of Aśoka, a Yavana army crossed the Hindu Kush, which was the northern frontier of Aśokan empire on the ruins of which an Indo-Greek kingdom arose.

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The *Yuga Purāṇa* section of the *Gārgī Saṃhitā* points to the decline of Maurya power in the Madhyadeśa when it says: ‘Tatah Sāketam ākramya Pañcālam Mathurāmstathā | Yavanaḥ duṣṭavikrāntaḥ prāpsyati Kusumadhvajam ‖ Tataḥ Puṣapure prāpte Karddame prathite hite ‖ Ākulā viṣayā sarve bhaviṣyanti na saṃśayaḥ ‖¹ In Patañjali’s *Mahābhāṣya* there is a similar line: ‘Arunaḍ Yavanaḥ Sāketaṃ: Arunad Yavano Madhyamikām.’ According to Sir R. G. Bhandarkar this shows that a certain Yavana or Greek prince had besieged Sāketa or Ayodhyā and another place called Madhyamikā (near Chitor) when Patañjali wrote this. Kālidāsa in his *Mālavikāgnimitram* refers to a conflict between the Śuṅga prince Vasumitra and a Yavana on the southern bank of the Sindhu. The name of this invader, however, is not given in the *Mahābhāṣya* or the *Mālavikāgnimitram*.² It is clear at any rate that the extension of Yavana power to the interior of India was thwarted in the first instance by the Śuṅgas. In Western India the rising power of the Andhras, Andhrabhṛtyas or Sātavāhanas caused the last vestige of Yavana power to disappear. Thus from the Nāsik Cave Inscription of Gautamīputra Śātakarṇi we learn that he destroyed the Śakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas. While in the north-west of India the Yavanas were swept away by the onrush of the Parthians or Pahlavas, as we learn from Chinese sources.

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² 1921, p. 29.

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³ *Gates of India*, p. 122.

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⁴ *Carmichael Lectures*, 1921, p. 32.

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⁵ Cf. McCrindle’s *Ancient India : its invasion by Alexander the Great*, pp. 79-80.

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⁶ Chinnock’s edition, p. 399.

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⁷ *Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I, p. 354.

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¹ *Cambridge History of India*, Vol. I, p. 354.

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² *Carmichael Lectures*, 1921, p. 32.

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³ Rock Edict XIII.

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⁴ Cf. ‘*Yona-Kamboyeshu Nabhake Na(bhi)tina Bhoja-Pitinikeshu Amdhra-Puli(de) shu savatra devanam priyasa dhramanuśasti anuvatamti.*’ (Shabhazgarhi text—*Inscriptions of Aśoka*, edited by Bhandarkar and Majumdar, pp. 53-4.)

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⁵ *Carmichael Lectures*, 1921, p. 26.

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⁶ *Ibid.*, p. 27.

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⁷ *Numismatic Chronicle*, XX, 191.

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¹ *J.R.A.S.*, 1895, 874 and ff.

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² *Carmichael Lectures*, 1921, p. 29.

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³ *Political History of Ancient India*, 4th Ed., p. 253.

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⁴ *Mahāvaṃsa*, Geiger’s translation, p. 194.

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¹ Kern, *Bṛhatsaṃhitā*, p. 37.

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² *Political History of Ancient India*, 4th Ed., p. 316.

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