than to those who share a common blood". With a small reformation, the Hellenistic civilization is the evolution of classical Greek civilization into a civilization with global proportions, this time open to everybody. Similarly, Hellene evolved from a national name signifying an ethnic Greek to a cultural term signifying anybody who conducted his life according to Greek mores. Ionians (Ἴωνες), Yunani, and Yavan (יָוָן) A wholly different term came to establish itself in the East. The ancient people of the Middle East referred to the Hellenes as Yunan, deriving from Persian Yauna, itself a loan of Greek Ιωνία (Ionia), the western coast of Asia Minor. It is by affiliation with the Ionian tribe the Persians conquered in the late 6th century BC that their name extended to all Hellenes. All peoples under Persian influence adopted the term, and it is from this root that Sanskrit Yavana derives, which one encounters in ancient Sanskrit sources, first attested in Pāṇini's grammar, and later referring, together with Pali Yona, Yonaka to the Indo-Greeks. The term Yunan is used in current Persian, Arabic (), Azeri, Turkish, Hindi (यूनान), Indonesian and Malay. The related Hebrew name, Yavan or Javan (), was used to refer to the Greek nation in the Eastern Mediterranean in early Biblical times. There was an eponymous character Javan mentioned in Genesis 10:2. In later times it was used for all Hellenistic kingdoms (for example, the Maccabeans applied it to their Seleucid foes). "Yavan" is still the name used for modern Greece in contemporary Israel. Although the contemporary Chinese term for Greece (希臘 Xīlà) is based on Hellas, Chinese previously used what was likely a version of the Yunan or Yona root when referring to the Dàyuān (大宛). The Dàyuān were probably the descendants of the Greek colonies that were established by Alexander the Great and prospered within the Hellenistic realm of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians, until they were isolated by the migrations of the Yueh-Chih around 160 BC. It has been suggested that the name Yuan was simply a transliteration of the words Yunan, Yona, or Ionians, so that Dàyuān (literally "Great Yuan") would mean "Great Yunans" or "Great Ionians." Hellene comes to mean "pagan" The name Hellene was given the meaning "pagan" by the early Christian church, and retained that meaning until the end of the millennium. It is believed that contact with Christian Jews led some Christians to use