Of the older races, it seems probable that the Yavanas must be distinguished from the Turanians. It will hardly now be contended that they were pure Greeks, though their name may be merely a mispronunciation of Ionian. The term seems to have been applied by Indian authors to any foreign race coming from the westward who did not belong to one of the acknowledged kingdoms known to them. As such it would apply to any western adventurers, who during the existence of the Bactrian kingdom sought to establish settlements in any part of India, and would also apply to the expatriated Bactrians themselves when driven from their homes by the Yuechi, 120 or 130 years B.C. It is only in this sense that we can explain their presence in Orissa before and about the Christian Era, but in the west the term may have been more loosely applied. The Cambojas seem to have been a people inhabiting the country between Candahar and Cabul, who, when the tide was setting eastward, joined the crowd, and sought settlements in the more fertile countries within the Indus. The Sakas were well known to classical authors as the Sacæ, or Scythians. They pressed on with the rest, and became apparently most formidable during the first four centuries of the Christian Era. It was apparently their defeat by the great Vicramaditya in the battle at Korûr, on the banks of the Indus, A.D. 524 or 544, that raised the popularity of that monarch to its highest pitch, and induced the Hindus at a subsequent age to institute the era known by his name 600 years before his time, and another called by his other name, Sri Harsha, 1000 years before the date of the battle of Korûr.[28] Another important horde were the Ephthalites, or White Huns, who came into India apparently in the 4th century, and one of whose kings, if we may trust Cosmas Indicopleustes, was the head of a powerful state in northern India, about the year 535. They, too, seem to have been conquered about the same time by the Hindus, and, as both the Sakas and Hunas were undoubtedly Buddhists, it may have been their destruction that first weakened the cause of that religion, and which led to its ultimate defeat a little more than a century afterwards. During the dark ages, 750 to 950, we do not know of any horde passing the Indus. The Mahomedans were probably too strong on the frontier to admit of its being done, and after that age they--and they only--conducted the various invasions which completely changed the face and character of northern India. For seven centuries they were continued, with only occasional interruptions, and at last resulted in placing the Mahomedan power supreme, practically, over the whole of India, but only to fall to pieces like a house of cards, before the touch of Western civilisation. All this, however, is written, and written so distinctly, in so many books, that it need not be recapitulated here. SOUTHERN INDIA.