One of the great controversies in “Indology” has been the term “Yavana”. But our Itihasa-Purana long ago expressed itself clearly. As usual, rather than speaking in one voice, Bharatiyas, especially our two clever by half half-wits  in their philognostic navel gazing have made matters worse by further associating the term with Indo Greeks.

Fortunately, our real Acharyas, such as Pandit Kota Venkatachalam, trenchantly established the truth. Whatever the later usage towards Persianised Turks and Arabs, “Yavana” (especially in the Puranas) refers to degraded Aryas who later became the Kambojas, Sakas, and Parasikas (Persians). Some of the Yavanas became Ionian-Greek, but the Yavanas referenced in the Puranas were not Greeks. “Yavanacharya” and “Yavaneshwara” were not Greek. Milinda from Milinda Panha was not Greek.

Pandit Chelam categorically denies that the Greeks had any kingdoms East of the Indus River. In his “Plot in the Indian Chronology” he wrote that the British fabricated much evidence and even forged coins. Indo-greek history constructed primarily on the basis of coins (numismatics). Were these forgeries?—worth scientifically investigating.

Per the Vishnu purana, Maharaja Sagara (ancestor of Sri Rama) of the Ikshvakus defeated and banished the Yavanas. He made them cut their hair and shave their beards, hence the fashion of the western-most variety. Of course, western “Indologists” are careful to omit this part, but happily use the Garga Samhita and its alleged attachment, the Yuga Purana, to advance the claim that the Indo-Greeks successfully campaigned in Northern India. Pandit Chelam has questioned the authenticity of this “Yuga Purana” saying that it does not appear to be the work of Vriddha-Garga.

That is the stupidity of our band of half-wits because what they find “fascinating” and gleefully promote in their half-knowledge is actually used by westerners, western wannabes, and mid-east wannabes to mock them. Milinda was not Menander, but was a Yavana-Kshatriya of Balhika (Transoxiana). As degraded kshatriyas they had been banished from India, but were promised by Ishvara that they would successfully invade Madhyadesa later in the Kaliyuga (see Medieval Period). Their time is now over.

While Astika Brahmanas abandoned them, as they had abandoned the Vedic rite and Sadachara, these Yavana-Kshatriyas nevertheless had their own Yavana-Brahmanas, Yavana-Vaishyas, and Yavana-Sudras. Per the Vedic Arya estimation of Madhyadesa (that is the Gangetic core), all these had the status of Mleccha only.

Therefore, the “Yavanacharya” and “Yavaneshvara” of the Surya Siddhantha, are none other than these exiled vratya Indians, who later joined with the various borderland tribes and became their rulers. That is why Yavana Astronomy is praised. That is what Yavana actually means. And that is why “Silence is Golden”, because these self-same morons-archaeologist who just discovered the topic in their Wikipedia research, have gone so far as to bring this to the attention of troll magazine and its resident olog-hai. That is why knowledge is not wisdom.

The reality is, Western Indology knows damn little about the Indo-Greeks, and a recent European scholar admitted as much. It took the work of native Bharatiya historians, and many decades, to push back against the colonial narrative established by the British, which imagined Demetrios and Menander as an ancient Clive & Dalhousie. Luckily for us, our ahankari-shikhandis lost no time to bring a broken narrative to the attention of all the wrong people, and help them revive it. But hey, who cares when we can give gyaan to grow follower counts and engage in half-knowledged speculation!

So next time you come across something that could be misportrayed and misused against your own people, make use of that dm option, do further research, or simply remember the value of “shut up”.

As for the full account of the Yavanas, here is some of what Bharatiya Charitra Bhaskara, Sri Kota Venkatachalam, wrote on the matter [Emphasis and Proofing ours]:

The following Post was originally published at True Indian History on April 28, 2009

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Reference to Yavana countries:

To the west of Kashmir there were five Yavana countries. Some of them are now part of Kashmir Empire. These Yavanas were not Greeks but they belonged to the Kshatriya race of India. As these disregarded and neglected the performance of vedic duties and rites they were called Mlechchas. In those Yavana regions lived four castes of people. As all these castes relinquished Vedic rites, their caste-names were merely nominal.

Among the people of the Yona kingdoms, Rajatarangini relates that there were castes called Yona Brahmins, Yona Kshatriyas, Yona Vaisyas and Yona Sudras.
Yona or Yavana Kingdoms:

1. Abhisara, 2. Uraga (Urasa), 3. SimhaPura (Singapura)
4, Divya Kataka (Deva Kataka or Kataka ), 5, Uttara
jyotisha.

(Vide the Map of western India in post ‘The Empire of Kashmir’).

“Abhisara” consisted of two regions namely “‘Darva” and “Abhisara.” The kings of these Yavana regions were Kshatriyas who became Mlechchas, were subordinate and paid tribute to Kashmir Kings. We find in Rajatarangini many instances, when these Yavana rulers revolted and became independent and the Kashmir monarchs subdued the rebels and brought them again under their sovereignty. Some of these five regions are part of Kashmir and others are on the western border. In the list of the Kashmir Kings, during the reign of 130th ruler, Kalasa Maha Raja, there was the description of Yona Brahmin as follows,

“There was a Brahmin born in the Yona Village who begged alms of paddy. His name was “Loshtaka” and he was considered to be an Astrologer of that village.” So says Rajatarangjni.

From this, it is evident that the Kshatriyas residing in the Yona regions, on the borders of Kashmir, though they were firstly Kshatriyas, were treated as Mlechchas, on account of their disregarding their vedic duties; the other caste people also were called Mlechchas. Therefore, Rajatarangini relates that there were caste differences even among the Mlechchas. The yona Brahmins were experts in Astrology. The ‘Yavana. Rishi’, the author of “Yavana Siddhanta”, was a ‘Bharatiya Yavana Brahmin’, but not a Greek. The territory “Ionia” which got that name, on account of its conquest by the Yavanas of india, was later called Greece from its contact with the savage Greek tribes.

The Bharata Yavanas were of a very ancient origin. They took the sciences of Astrology and others, on their migration to ‘Ionia’(modern Greece) from India, but India borrowed nothing from Greece. On the otherhand. the western writers turned matters topsy-turvy and proclaimed that all the arts and sciences flowed from Greece to India. The histories containing this inverted information were introduced as Text-Books and our children were taught these packs of lies in the schools and colleges.

As the students were manufactured to be disciples of the Greeks, as a result, they cultivated a love for Greek lore and learning and developed a hate for Bharatiya knowledge and wisdom. Until and unless correct and true history of Bharat is written and these authentic books are prescribed as Texts for study in the schools and Colleges, these wrong and baneful notions cannot be torpedoed and the minds of future generations of young men cannot be diverted from the tinsel glamour of west to the true glory of the East, the hearth and home of culture and civilisation from time immemorial.

The following Post was originally published at True Indian History on July 4, 2009

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Pandit Chelam provides an excerpt from a correspondence. Following that, he responds to the questions with his answer on Yavanas.

The two questions: The learned Dr. Sirkar (Govt. Epigraphist for India,Ootacamund, South India) asked in a letter in February,1955 after receiving a copy of a booklet “The age of Buddha from Pandit Chelam) :-·
On the basis of your (Puranic) Chronology how do you account for
1. The Yavana king “Milinda” of Sakala mentioned in the “Milinda Panha” who flourished 500 years after the Buddha’s Parinirvana?
2. The Yavana Monarch “Amtiyoka” whose dominions bordered on the empire of Asoka, grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, according to Maurya inscriptions?
To answer the questions raised, we felt the need for further investigation of allied history and historical research and came upon an essay by the learned Dr. D.C.Sircar himself on ‘The Yavanas’ in Vol.II of “The History and Culture of the Indian People” published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. We acknowledge that we found the essay also very useful for our purposes in this connection in furnishing our answers to his questions.

In Vol II of the “History and Culture of the Indian People” Dr. D.C. Sirkar writes about the Yavanas :-

“One of the factors that led to the extinction of the dynasty of the Imperial Mauryas was the advent of the Yavana invaders through the North—western gate of India. Indeed the most interesting feature of the post Maurya period of Indian history is the establishment of foreign supremacy in Uttarapatha, Aparanta Paschaddesa, and the adjoining region of Madhyadesa successively by alien powers, and the Yavanas were the first among them.
The word ‘Yavana’ was used in medieval Indian literature as a synonym of Mlechcha and indicated any foreigner. But as late as the early centuries of the Christian era it meant to an Indian, the Greeks only. The word was derived from the old Persian form ‘Yauna’ signifying originally the Indian Greeks and later, all people of Greek nationality. The Greeks of Ionia in Asia Minor, between the Aegean Sea and Lydia, and the people of North Western India, certainly came into contact with each other as subjects of the Achaemenion emperors of Persia since the time of Darius I (522-488 B.C.) Vide p. 101, Ch. VII of Vol. II of Dr.Sircar’s “History and Culture of the Indian people”, of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series.)”

[Pandit Chelam’s Response to Sirkar]

It is not a fact that foreigners established supremacy in ‘Uttarapatha’ in the post-Mauryan period. It is not correct to say the Sanskrit word “Yavana” is derived from the Persian form ‘Yauna’. 70% of the vocabulary of ancient Persian consists of Sanskrit words. The Persian language is itself a Prakrita(Vernacular dialect) derived from Sanskrit. The original Persians constituted a branch of Bharatiya Kshatriyas. Along with some others they were Kshatriyas excommunicated from the Kshatriya caste of Bharat on account of the non-observance by them of the regulations and rituals prescribed by the Vedas for the Kshatriya caste.

The regular Kshatriyas refrained from social and marital association with the excommunicated branches. One [o]f such excommunicated branches was known as the ‘Parasaka’ and they settled down in Eastern Persia. The region was named after them and came to be known as ‘Paarasika’. As they had originally belonged to the Aryan race, the country was also known by the more ancient name of Iran. Sanskrit was the parent language from which was derived the dialect known as Persian. The contention that the Sanskrit word ‘Yavana’ is derived from the Prakrit word ‘Youna’ of the derived Persian language is entirely baseless. The Sakas, Yavanas, Barbaras, Bahlikas and others were all branches of Kshatriya caste belonging originally to the Aryan race and the Hindu fold, but known generally as Mlechchas, having been excommunicated for their non observance of the prescribed caste regulations and duties, but they were severally referred to by their separate Kshatriya subsect names whenever necessary.

The Sakas, Yavanas, and others had their own Kingdoms in ‘Uttarapatha’ for thousands of years before the Mahabharata War (3138 B.C.). Thev were Hindus (excommunicated) and not at all foreigners.

The Mauryas were not emperors, sovereigns over an empire. From the time of Chandragupta Maurya. Chandragupta Maurya was able to establish himself on the throne of the Magadha kingdom, only with the help of the famous Chanakya. His son Bindusara also was only the king of M[a]gadha and not an emperor. In his time Magadha extended as far as ‘Taxila’ in the west. His son Asoka appears to have extended his dominion by conquest and got recognised as an emperor. Even for his empire the western boundary was only at Takshasila and there were the Yavana kingdoms and Gandhara to the north west and west of it, Kambhoja and Kashmir to the north. His descendants were not so formidable and so in a few generations after him the empire dwindled gradually and came to be confined once again to the Magadha kingdom only. In 1218 B.C. Pushya-mitra-Sunga murdered the last king of Magadha of the Maurya dynasty, himself became king of Magadha, conquered and brought under his suzerainty the neighbouring kingdoms and performed the Aswamedha to establish his claim to the status of an emperor.

The Maurya empire was disrupted on account of the weakness of the successors of Asoka which led to the independence of the feudatory kings and not on account of the invasions of foreign ‘Yavanas.’ Yavana kings were perhaps crossing the frontiers (river Indus) with small armies and indulging in marauding activities in the villages and towns across the border. But they were returning to their countries at the approach of the armies of Magadha. These Yavanas across the border of the Maurya empire were of Bharatiya Kshatriya descent and were neither Greeks nor foreigners. There were no Greeks at that time.

It is wrong to identify the word ‘Yavana’ with the ‘Greek.’ The ancient Yavana kingdoms now comprise modern Afghanistan. The Yavanas and the Yavana kingdoms were in the northwestern region of Bharat from times immemorial and not of foreign advent. There was only one (Bharatiya)Yavana invasion in the time of the Maurya emperors and then it was repelled. lt is erroneous to contend that the Maurya empire was disrupted by the Yavana invasions. It is not a fact. There is no historical evidence whatsoever in support of such a contention.

Sir william Jones, one of the most intellectual of the European critics of Sanskrit literature, pronounced the Sanskrit language to be ‘of a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either. (Vide Asiatic researches, Vol I, p, 422)

While thus innumerable reputed scholars unanimously declare that Sanskrit is the most ancient and the parent language of all the languages on the earth, from which all the other languages [w]ere derived, and in particular Zind, the ancient Persian language, is 70% Sanskrit and derived from Sanscrit it is surpriseing that Dr. Sirkar should suggest that the Sanskrit word “Yavana” is derived from the ancient persian word ‘Yauna’. The word ‘Yavana’ is frequently in use in Sanskrit literature, from times immemorial. To say that it has recently been imported into the Sanskrit language, argues little acquaintance with Sanskrit language and literature. There is a lot of information and innumerable references in Sanskrit literature to the Yavanas and other Bharatiya Kshatriya races which subsequently spread all over the world.

The following excerpts are from a Post at True Indian History on July 4, 2009

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Question II of Dr, Sirkar:- About the age of ‘Amtiyoka’, the Yavanah monarch mentioned in the edicts of Asoka.

[Pandit Chelam’s Response to Sirkar]

The above mentioned ‘Amtiyoka’ belonged to a branch of Bharatitya Yavana Kshatriyas. He was the ruler of ‘Simhapura’ one of the five Yavana kingdoms 1. Abhisara. 2, Uraga 3. Simhapura 4. Divyakataka 5. Uttarajyotisha.

The other four rulers were subordinate to him. These five kingdoms were all beyond the borders of Asoka’s empire on the North-west and a group stretching in sequence from west to northeast. Now we find them included 1. in Kashmir, 2. in the North- west Frontier Province and 3, 4. 5, in Afghanistan. They were very small kingdoms. The people of these regions were Yavana Kshatriyas and martial people who lived on their arms i.e. served as mercenary soldiers under any ruler who paid them. Their women were very beautiful and they were employed as body-guards in the royal (harems) households of several Indian princes.

These mercenary soldiers were very loyal to the masters under whom they served and sacrificed their lives if necessary for the safety of their masters. They were Kshatriyas of Solar descent. But they were excommunicated from the Aryan Kshatriya fold on account of their disregarding and discarding the Vedic rituals and observances.(Manu 10-43, 45) They were regarded as Mlechchas. When they could not secure employment under wealthy masters who could maintain them, they used to live upon theft and banditry, raiding peaceful villages and carrying away loot to their mountain regions

…

So “Amtiyoka” was a Bharatiya Yavana prince, not an Iono-Greek or Greek prince. He was the contemporary of Ashoka. His age was from 1472-36 B.C. The “Yavana” of Northwest Bharat became Ionian in Asia minor and Greece and mixing with the Greek the Ionian became Iono-Greek and then by the order of the Government of Ionia or Greece, the Iono-Greek became “Greek” and the country became “Greece”.

The following excerpts are from a Post at True Indian History on August 1,2009

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That Menander was a great Indo·Greek prince was recorded by the historian Strabo whose authority for the statement was a reference to him by the ancient writer Appolodorus. Periplus is another book assigned to 70-80 A.D., but of unknown authorship. But it is stated in this Periplus that coins with Greek letters and devices were current in the neighbourhood of Broach on the west coast of India in the first century A.D, ‘These coins resembled the insignia of Appolodorus and Menander, Greek Potentates who were in power after Alexander. Hence it is inferred that the neighbourhood of Broach might have been included in the Greek dominions in the times of Demetrius, Appolodorus and Menander. All this is entirely in the sphere of conjecture. It seems Appolodorus and Menander are mentioned in the list of Bharatiya Yavana princes in the writings of Justin, the historian. But his writings are now extinct and not available for verification.

It seems Plutarch also mentioned Menander as renowned for justice and that when he passed away the various cities in the neighbourhood contested for the privilege of holding his remains. This Menander is further identified with Milinda of the Milinda Panha (questions of Milinda), a Buddhist text containing the several questions raised by Milinda and the answers furnished to them by the Buddhist monk Nagasena at the end of which the prince, satisfied embraced Buddhism. This prince is spoken of as ‘Milindra’ in Avadana-Kalpa-lata by Kshemendra. In the Shinkot inscription the name is given as ‘Menadra‘ and so it may be identified as ‘Minendra’or ‘Menandra’. This name might be read into the devices on the coins, we are told.”

The following excerpts are from a Post at True Indian History on August 1,2009

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“In Hieun-Tsang’s writings there is scope for the current provisionally accepted date of 486 B.C, If we count 500 years from the provisionally accepted date of Buddha Nirvana we get 14 A,D. So Menander should belong to after 14 AD.,ie. Ist century A.D. But even this is pure conjecture and based on the assumption of the identity of Menander with the Milinda of Milinda panha, Even the provisionally accepted date of Buddha Nirvana is itself based on the wrong assumption of the contemporaneity of M[a]urya Chandragupta and Alexander of 324 B.C. How can we expect the superstructure to yield correct dates when the basic assumption is itself questionable and a mere conjecture? As soon as the hollowness of the original foundation of the entire structure is exposed and recognised the entire edifice topples down with a crash and the time for it is approaching.
It is wrong to identify Menander with Milinda. Menander even according to the author of the essay, Dr. Sirkar. belongs to the 2nd century B.C. It will he proved in the pages that follow that Milinda belongs to the end of the 14th century B.C.”

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References:

1. True Indian History. [Various Blog Posts]
2. Kota, Venkatachalam Paakayaji (Pandit). The Age of Buddha, Milinda, and Amtiyoko. Guntur: Sri Ajanta Printers.1956

Acknowledgement to Sri G.D. Prasad garu, Grandson of Pandit Sri Kota Venkatachalam, for his kind permission to reprint these Excerpts and Blog Posts.