Yavanas

[Yashwant Malaiya]

Responding to mine:
> It remind me something that is completely unrelated to this
> verse. One Jain sect, that once existed near Konkan region
> was named Yaapaniiya in Sanskrit (jaavNiiya in Prakrit). I
> have wondered about the origin of the term.

Stephen Hodge wrote:
>I would have thought this was quite obvious -- they are a long-lost
>tribe of early Japanese tourists who took the wrong turning in Korea
>and migrated through Turkic speaking Central Asia into India.  Of
>course, this forms part of the neglected JIT, which is another story.

I assume that you are not convinced about Yavanas  in India.

You can find the Heliodorus inscription (in central
India) photo and text in
The Indo_Greeks
by A.K. Narain
1957, Oxford Univ Press

and photographs of Indo-Greek coins with Vasudev/Balabhadra in
Mathura : The Cultural Heritage
by Doris Meth Srinivasan, Ed.
(July 1989)
South Asia Books; ISBN: 8185054371

As Klaus Karttunen wrote javaNalivi is mentioned as one of the
18 scripts in Jain literature. The Yavanas in India were
Indo-greeks, having originated from the Greek colonies in Balkh
region. Some of the Yavanas had settled as far as Tamilnadu
in India.

What I was wondering about is: could JaavaNiiya have been Yaavaniiya
rather than Yaapaniiya.

Yashwant