Tribes in Ancient India c35.13.2

c35.13.2

‘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.