in early Indian literature, either a Greek or another foreigner. The word appears in Achaemenian (Persian) inscriptions in the forms Yauna and Ia-ma-nu and referred to the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were conquered by the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great in 545 BC. The word was probably adopted by the Indians of the northwestern provinces from this source, and its earliest attested use in India is by the grammarian Pāṇini (c. 5th century BC) in the form Yavanānī, which is taken by commentators to mean Greek script. At that date the name probably referred to communities of Greeks settled in the eastern Achaemenian provinces.

From the time of Alexander the Great (c. 334 BC) Yavana came to be applied more specifically to the Greek kingdom of Bactria, and, even more specifically, after about 175 BC, to the Indo-Greek kingdom in the Punjab. Indian sources of that time regarded the Yavanas as a barbarian people of the northwest. From the beginning of the Christian era the word was often used loosely to refer to any foreigner; and at a much later date it frequently applied to the Muslim invaders of India.