Page:The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 4-1875.djvu/258

 August, 1 COBB.ESP0XDENCE A1H) MISCELLANEA. forward to enable us to test them. Meanwhile. for want of any such evidences as I hare adduced above in support of the identity of the Yavanas with the Greeks, we have at present no choice but to stick to tkat. And the historical origin of thi$ denomination is, moreover, close to hand. "We know from the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenidae that they had no other name for the Greeks but Ya-u-na (the Ionians of Minor Asia having been the first Greeks with whom they came in contact, they called the Greek nation in general by their name). Maybe already at that time the name had come over to India through the medium of a few of those Indian auxiliary troops in the army of Darius that escaped its gene- ral defeat and returned safely home. But the real notoriety of the name in India dates first from the time when Alexander waged war against her, as it was no doubt by Ptrriam iWwprfffarf that the communications between the two parties (Greeks and Hindus) were carried on, and from the conqnered people at large learned the name of their conquerors. The poli- tical supremacy of the Greeks in the north-west of India lasted for about 250 years, during which their culture and their name took deep root and left deep traces; when they ceased to be inde- pendent, their name passed, together with their sovereignty, titles, coinage, &c. t to their rivals and successors, the Indoskythians (Sakas), and after- wards from them step by step to the other foreign nations reigning in the north-west of India, — to the Parthians, Persians, — and finally to the AraBs and the Moslems in gen em 1. With regard to my own paper mentioned above, I beg to call attention to a very interesting com- munication of M. Julien Vinson in the Bevue da yigtique 4 VI. ISO It*. I had incidentally ob- served (II. 147 n.) that I did " not think t*$ri vr;is connected with sUchin also tho word .supposed to bo Malabarian, can scarcely have originated from 6ikhin,hat is rather perhaps some Dakhaiii word, which in that ease might very well be the root of the Hebrew word." M. Vinson starts from this my remark and shows that ftj^w ifl really a T a m i 1 mwd nif-ai/ te depaon, queue de paon. paou," and is radically connected with other Tamil words and roots. Thus ho arrives at tho result: "Sties marins do Salomon sont n-'elle- ment alles dans Find©, s'ila ont debarqne" sur une terre dont ils ont transcrit le nora 'Ophir, s'ila imt rapporte" des poons de cette ton cette terre eat cello habitde par les Abhtra, mm loiu des bunches de l'lndus, il est. nt'cessaire d'admettre que ces anciens Semites ont eu affaire, soit au pays meme des Abhtra, soit sur un autre point de la cote occidentalo de l'lnde, avec des penplades Dravidiennes, et que c'est de cell qu'ils ont recu les paons appele'es par clles probablement t6ke%, peut-etre tOki. 11 ny a pas loin de cette forme aux lecons de la Bible. ' This agrees perfectly well with the Malayalam derivation of the Sanskrit Sringavera {fyyyifitfn), ' ginger," given by my hououred friend Dr. Burnell in these columns, vol. I. p. 352. 2. The Maktlbhiisluja. — I have given in the In- dieeJw Studien, £111. 2&I-502, a detailed exjjosition of the religious, historical, geographical, social and literary dates resulting from the contents of this highly valuable work, introduced by a diBcusskra of the critical questions relating to its age Bad com- position, and to the authority and evidence-power of the words and passages it contains. Son) these points have been discussed meanwhile also in your columns, and others added, which I had failed to notice. At the end of my paper (pp. 497-.J have already answered the objections of Prof. Bhandarkar (hid. Ant. vol. II. pp. 238-40), but I ! «g to return here to some of them. I have first to state that in the principal passage as to the age of PataSjali,viz, the scholium to Panini HI. S. 129 (uartem4jwia/-)itheordpers. plur. lhavanii as given by Bhandarkar in vol. I. p. 300n. (wPfFf 5 ^ M^FrT), and repeated i h us by myself Ind 111.309, is to bo changed to the nom. sing* bhaoanti present tense, as tho Banaras edition really has. The sense of the pussageitself is however not altered by this correction, and with regard to that I must concede indeed that Bhandarkar's remark, that the purport of the passage /' tram ydja- njdnuth "is exactly similar to arunadYavanah Sdhe- tarn, the historical value of which is admitted by Prof. Weber," hits the very point of the question. But on the other baud I have to draw attention to the possibility that both passages may perhaps be considered as not at all test -evidences for l'iitaujaH's own age, but may belong to the so-called m'-rdhdbhiahikta uddharana. which he found al- ready in the traditional vfiM of Pantni'a text, in which case they ought very probably to bo con- sidered as teat-evidences for Oie age of Panini himself [lad. Stud. XIII. 315, 313, 320, 498).' I have further to retract my opposition to Bhan- darkar's taking the word ytt& • raidikctku ns a varttika, for I am informed by Prof. Kielhorn that he has got hold of a manuscript of the vdr' pdtha (a great desideratum as yet for tho right understanding of the Bhdaluja^ and that according to this MS. the work of the vdrttihtkdra really begins with the very words in qttestkm,ne6fte— wrf- ..' '«., In his "Allusions to Krishna in Patan- jalfH I Ant ILL 1+-16) Bhan- ihtrkar has added one metrical passage more which had escaped my notice (VI. 3, 6, Jandrdanas tv