Yona

"Yona", "Yonaka" or "Yavana" are Pali words used in ancient India to designate Greeks. It is a transliteration of the word "Ionian", who were probably the first Greeks to be known in the East.

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This usage was shared by many of the country east of Greece, from the Mediterranean to India and China:

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• Assyrians used the word Iawanu
• Persians used the word Yauna or Yavanu
• In Biblical writings, the word was Yavan or Jawan
• In Arabic and Turkish it was Yunan
• The Han Chinese used the term "Great Yuan" (Ta-Yuan) to designate what were probably the descendants of Alexander the Great in the region of Ferghana, centered on his city of Alexandria Eschate (Hou Han Shu, Late Han History).

Pali: P?li (ISO 15919/ALA-LC: ) is a Middle Indo-Aryan language (or prakrit) of India. It is best known as the language of many of the earliest extant Buddhist scriptures, as collected in the P?i Canon or Tipitaka, and as the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism....

India: The Republic of India is a country in South Asia which comprises most of the Indian subcontinent. India has a coastline which stretches over seven thousand kilometres, and shares its borders with Pakistan to the west, the People's Republic of China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, and Bangladesh...

Greeks: :For other uses of the name "Greek", see Greek (disambiguation)...