" This, apart "from an internal
chronology based on the character of the works themselves, and on the
quotations, &c., therein contained, is the only one possible," we are
told. As a result the absurd statement that "the Indian astronomers
regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers" (p. 252). Ergo, their
teachers were Greeks. For with Weber and others "Yavana" and "Greek"
are convertible terms.
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.
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