Materials for the Study of the Early History of the Vaishnava Sect c8.124

c8.124

It is a desperate resort to imagine that this well-known ethnic term really means non-Greeks.⁴ Pāṇini in his *Sūtra* iv, 1, 49, explains the formation of the word *Yavanānī*—to which, according to the *Vārttika*, the word ‘lipi,’ writing, must be supplied, and which therefore signifies “the writing of the Yavanas or Greeks,” and not “the writing of the Persians,'' or ``the cuneiform writing.¹ The employment by the Indians of a special term and affix to denote the Greek writing could only have arisen after long acquaintance with the Yavanas and their alphabet. Such a prolonged intercourse between the Indians and the Greeks was not in my opinion possible in the seventh century B.C. when the empires of Assyria and Media intervened between India and Hellas, but was possible, and even probable after the Achaemenian conquest of Gandhāra, the native land of Pāṇini, for the Persian empire formed a link which connected India with Greece, and Greek mercenaries and Greek officials were largely employed by the Persian Kings and Satraps.²