311

THE YAVANA PRESENCE IN ANCIENT

It has often been assumed that the social structure in ancient India was neatly divided and compartmentalized in accordance with the four-fold aarna hierarchy with very little scope for mobility. This picture, based solely on evidence from the Dharmafiistras, fails to take into account the dichotomy and at times the contradic- tion that existed between the ritual status and actual status, and the constant attempts of the law-makers to reconcile the two. This is nowhere clearer than in the theory of the mixed-castes propounded by the Dharmafiistras and the gradual 312 increase in their number. This theory was an ingenious means by which new categories could be formed as and when the need arose and by which exterior groups could be accommodated in the z?arnafold. According to the Gautama Dharma Stitra the number of mixed-castes was eleven, Baudhayana increased it to fourteen and by the time of the Manusmrti, chapter X being ascribable to the late Gupta period, the number had risen to sixty-one'). This process of legitimisation of non- groups was made much more complex by the gradual Sanskritisation of tribal areas and by the influx of foreigners such as the Indo-, the and the Kusanas into northern and in the early centuries of the Christian era. This paper considers the presence of the Yavanas in the subcontinent in the early centuries of the Christian era and their involvement in the trading network. While inscriptions and literary references provide useful information on the subject, numismatic data affords further evidence of contacts. An effective barometer of the prosperity and economic power of a community is the social status accorded to it by the Dharmasastras. The word Yavana is a back-formation from the term Yona which is in turn derived from the form Yauna originally denoting the Ionian Greeks who were conquered by Cyrus in 545 B.C. It first occurs in the Behistun inscription of Darius I dated to 519 B.C.2). As the Ionian Greeks were the first to have come into contact with India, the term was initially used for them. It was gradually extended to include not only the Greeks of West Asia but any group of people coming either from West Asia or the eastern Mediterranean3). In medieval Indian literature the word yavana was used as a synonym of and indicated any foreigner 4). Because of historical factors, the earliest Yavana settlements were located in the north-western region of the subcontinent. Excavations at Taxila have shown that the city of Sirkap at that site was founded by the Indo-Greeks and extended and fortified by a masonry wall built by the Indo-Parthians5). More recently work at Kandahar and at Ai Khanum has been very fruitful. At the latter site, the remains of a city said to have been founded either by Alexander or an officer of Seleucus have been unearthed 6). Early classical writers refer to a Greek colony named Nysa in the north-west, whose inhabitants claimed to be the descendants of a troop led by Dionysus in an earlier period'). The thirteenth major rock edict of Asoka refers to kingdoms situated along his borders and includes the country of the A bilingual rock edict of Asoka in Greek and Aramaic has been found near Kan- dahar and another fragmentary epigraph in Greek at Kandahar itself. The Junagadh inscription of Rudradaman, recounting the history of the Sudarsana lake, states that it was created by the Vaisya Pusyagupta during the reign of Can- dragupta Maurya and endowed with conduits by Yavanaraja Tusdspha on behalf of Asoka9). The Greek Heliodorus records his devotion to Visnu in his Besnagar pillar inscription and speaks of himself as a member of the Bhdgavata sect10). In the epigraphs discussed so far, the term Yavana is used to denote Greeks and Indo-Greeks, and this is also reflected in early Indian literature. Foreigners such as the Paradas, the Sakas, the Parasikas, the Yavanas and the like figure as par- ticipants in the Rajasuya sacrifice of Yudhijjhiral l), while some of them find men- tion as participants in the svayamaara of Draupadi 12) . The Rdmdyana locates the country of the Yavanas and the city of the Sakas between the of the Kurus