--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Koenraad Elst" <koenraad.elst@...> wrote:
> Both the Alexandrine Greeks and the Moghuls were called Yavanas,
> and you and I understand that this is because a change of meaning
> in the word has occurred. Yavana meant Greek, and was subsequently
> extended to all the foreigners coming from the NW.
Some of the Hindu nationalist correspondents you hint at in your post have argued that "Yavana" was, since the beginning, a generic term designating various types of foreigners settled in the NW (mainly in Afghanistan) and that the term did not originally apply to the Greeks only. Yet, there appears to be strong litarary evidence that, around the turn of the Christian era, the term Yavana was employed throughout the Indian sub-continent to indicate a class of foreigners whose homeland was ultimately located in the eastern Mediterranean basin, i.e., the Greeks (including those settled in West and Central Asia and the Indo-Greeks), and the culturally related and mainly Greek-speaking -- whether they were bilingual or not -- inhabitants of the Roman East.
In the Sangam literature of the Old Tamil country (ca. 1st c. BCE / 1st c. CE - 3rd c. CE) the term Yavana is applied to merchants from the Roman East (Egypt and the Levant). The earliest poetic anthologies in Old Tamil that have survived to the present speak of "Yavanas" who came with gold and *wine* (a quintessential Roman product) in their ships and returned with pepper. One of the ports Roman traders based on the northern coasts of the Red Sea frequently visited was Muziris (mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and called Muciri in Old Tamil sources); the exact location of this ancient port has been revealed with a fair degree of certainty after excavations carried out from 2004 to 2009 at a place called Pattanam in the present state of Kerala.
References in later Sangam texts dated to the 2nd c. CE onwards indicate a more varied role of the Yavanas, and, in addition to being traders, they also seem to have established regular Yavana settlements. They were now employed as bodyguards to kings and
as palace guards during the night. Elsewhere the Yavanas are described as prosperous people indulging in drinking and decorating themselves.
It would then seem that around the beginning of the Christian era the term Yavana indicated three different categories of foreigners, viz. the Greeks, the Indo-Greeks, and the inhabitants of the Roman East. While the first two categories were resident in the north-western and western regions of the subcontinent, the third category settled in the ports of the peninsula and participated primarily in trading ventures.
Therefore, around the turn of the Christian era the Yavanas did not only come to India from the NW, but also from across the Arabian Sea. What better argument could prove that the Sanskrit term "Yavana" (Pali/Prakrit "Yona") anciently designated the Greeks, and *not* some ethnic groups settled generically in the NW (who could also have not been ethnic Greeks?).
Regards,
Francesco