But it so happens that Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single Greek—­Pythagoras; as Sankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu philosopher; and the ancient Aryan astronomical writers cited his opinions to criticize and compare them with the teachings of their own astronomical science, long before him perfected and derived from their ancestors.  The honorific title of Acharya (master) was applied to him as to every other learned astronomer or mystic; and it certainly did not mean that Pythagoras or any other Greek “Master” was necessarily the master of the Brahmans.  The word “Yavana” was a generic term employed ages before the “Greeks of Alexander” projected “their influence” upon Jambudvipa, to designate people of a younger race, the word meaning Yuvan “young,” or younger.  They knew of Yavanas of the north, west, south and east; and the Greek strangers received this appellation as the Persians, Indo-Scythians and others had before them.  An exact parallel is afforded in our present day.  To the Tibetans every foreigner whatsoever is known as a Peling; the Chinese designate Europeans as “red-haired devils;” and the Mussalmans call every one outside of Islam a Kuffir.  The Webers of the future, following the example now set them, may perhaps, after 10,000 years, affirm, upon the authority of scraps of Moslem literature then extant, that the Bible was written, and the English, French, Russians and Germans who possessed and translated or “invented” it, lived in Kaffiristan shortly before their era under “Moslem influence.”  Because the Yuga Purana of the Gargi Sanhita speaks of an expedition of the Yavanas “as far as Pataliputra,” therefore, either the Macedonians or the Seleuciae had conquered all India!  But our Western critic is ignorant, of course, of the fact that Ayodhya or Saketa of Rama was for two millenniums repelling inroads of various Mongolian and other Turanian tribes, besides the Indo-Scythians, from beyond Nepaul and the Himalayas.  Prof.  Weber seems finally himself frightened at the Yavana spectre he has raised, for he queries:—­“Whether by the Yavanas it is really the Greeks who are meant or possibly merely their Indo-Scythian or other successors, to whom the name was afterwards transferred.”  This wholesome doubt ought to have modified his dogmatic tone in many other such cases.

But, drive out prejudice with a pitch fork it will ever return.  The eminent scholar, though staggered by his own glimpse of the truth, returns to the charge with new vigour.  We are startled by the fresh discovery that Asuramaya:* the earliest astronomer, mentioned repeatedly in the Indian epics, “is identical with ‘Ptolemaios’ of the Greeks.”  The reason for it given is, that “this latter name, as we see from the inscriptions of Piyadasi, became in Indian ‘Turamaya,’ out of which the name ‘Asuramaya’ might very easily grow; and since, by the later tradition, this ‘Maya’ is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in the West.”