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TRIBES IN ANCIENT INDIA in the Majjhima Nikāya (II, 149) as flourishing in the time of Gautama Buddha and Assalāyana.1
The Milinda-Pañho refers to the land of the Yonas as the place fit for the attainment of Nibbāna (Trenckner ed., p. 327). The Mahāvastu speaks of the assembly of the Yonas where anything which was decided was binding on them (Vol. I, p. 171). Hence D. R. Bhandarkar in his Carmichael Lectures 2 observes that there is nothing strange in Panini flourishing in the sixth century B.C. and in his referring also to Yavanānī, the writing of the Greeks. When Alexander invaded India he found a large number of autonomous tribes and principalities in the North-Western Frontier Province and the Punjab. Among these we find mention of the Nysaeans forming a small hill-state with a republican constitution. They had Adouphis then as their President and they had a Governing Body of three hundred members. Holdich in discussing the site of Nysa 3 shows that the lower spurs and valleys of Koh-i-Mor are where the ancient city of Nysa once stood. According to Bhandarkar, 4 Nysa was situated between the Kophen and the Indus. In the Fifth Book of Arrian's work,5 we find two relevant passages in this connection. Arrian says, 'The Nysaeans are not an Indian race, but descended from the men who came into India with Dionysus.'6 The deputies of Nysa, who waited upon Alexander, themselves told the Macedonian monarch that their city was founded by Dionysus; for Dionysus, the Greeks believed, had gone conquering across Asia, at the head of his revellers, in the old heroic days. "The Greeks', Bevan says,?'always experienced a keen joy of recognition, when they could connect foreign things with the figures of their own legends, and they were delighted with the suggestion. In the legend the name Nysa was specially connected with Dionysus-it was the name of his nurse, or of the place where he was born or of his holy hill—and the name of this little town in the Hindu Kush, as it was pronounced to Alexander, had a similar sound. Again the legend said that Dionysus had been born from the thigh (mēros) of Zeus, and a neighbouring summit, the Greeks discovered, was called Meru. When, moreover, the Greeks saw the sacred plants of the same god, viz. vine and ivy (which grew nowhere else in the land of the Indians), running wild over the mountain, as they knew them at home, no doubt could be left. So hostilities with these interesting kinsmen
i Cf. Yona Kambojesu ... dveva vannā, ayyo c'eva dāsoca. 2 1921, p. 29.
3 Gates of India, p. 122. 4 Carmichael Lectures, 1921, p. 32. 5 Cf. McCrindle's Ancient India : its invasion by Alexander the Great, pp. 79-80. 6 Chinnock's edition, p. 399. 7 Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 354.
