YAVAN or Javan, the seventh son of Japheth. Colonel Tod says 'the Hericula also claim from Yavan or Javan, the thirteenth in descent from Yayat, the third son of the primeval patriarch. I YAVANA, a term applied by the Aryan Brah mans to conquering races who approached and invaded India from the north-west. The Bactrian Greeks were certainly so called, and the term seems to have been applied to the Sakm Scythians, and perhaps to other races. The Yavana invaded Orissa repeatedly between B.C. 538 to A.D. 526 from Persia, Kashmir.
Bunsen supposes the meaning of the word Yavana to be doubtful,—that it may be traceable to times after Alexander, or that it may be au ancient inaccurate name of a people who pushed on towards the Mediterra,nean. Aecording to Dr. Caldwell, it was a term applied to the Greeks, and subsequently to any race approaching India from the west of Asia. The name was derived from Javan, whose descendants, the Ionians, were the first Greeks with whom the Indians became acquainted, but it came afterwards to signify the Arabs. The Bactrian Greeks are usually termed Yavana in Sanskrit literature ; but Colonel Tod warns us not to mistake them for the Yavana descended from Yavana, fifth son of Yayat, third son of the patriarchal Nahus, though the Ionians may be of this race. According to Colonel Tod, the Yavana or Greek princes. who apparently con tinued to rule within the Indus after the Christian era, Were either the remains of the Bactrian dynasty or the independent kingdom of Demetrius or Apollodotus, who ruled in the Panjab, having as their capital Sagala, changed by Demetrius to Euthymedia. The term Yavana is in modern
times applied by Hindus of Northern India to Muhammadans of every description ; but in works prior to the Muhammadan era, some other people must be intended. The interpretation of the word by Sir W. Jones is Ionians or Asiatic Greeks, and there are some considerations in favour of this, although the chief argument in its behalf is the difficulty of attaching it t,o any other people. Doubtless, however, Yavaua is certainly a term not exclusively applied to the Greeks. According to Professor Lassen, it was used to designate only the Semitic nations. In the Bactrian Pali inscrip tions of king Priyadarsi, the word is written Yona, and the term Yona-raja is associated with Anti ochus, probably Antiochus the Great, the ally of the Indian prince Sophagasenes, about B.C. 210. The Puranas describe them as wise and eminently brave. Yavana are. mnilioped as occupying Orissa for 146 years, when they were expelled, A.D.473, by Yayati Kesari. Dr. Buchanan meutions a dynasty of Yavana, (iii. pp. 97, 112) at Anagundi on the Tumbudra river in the 8th and 9th centuries.
The corrupted form of Jonakan ifs applied on the S.W. coasts of the Peninsula as a title of the Labbai race.—Bunsen, Egypt, iii. 555; Prin. hul. 'Int.; Rajasthan, i. 233.