IntroductionThe Milinda Pañha is an ancient and much venerated book of the Buddhists, indeed regarded so highly as to be included by the Burmese in the Pali Canon. In the Pali book it says that the conversations between King Milinda and Nāgasena took
place five hundred years after the Parinibbāna of the Buddha. Mr T.W. Rhys Davids, the most able translator of the Pali texts, regarded the Milinda Pañha very highly. He said, “I venture to think that the ‘Questions of King Milinda’ is undoubtedly the masterpiece of Indian prose; and indeed the best book of its class, from a literary point of view, that had been produced in any country.”1 The style of the Milinda Pañha is very much like a Platonic dialogue, Nāgasena playing the part of Socrates and winning over King Milinda to the Buddhist view point by his sound reasoning and his fitting similes. The author is not known but it is almost certain that he lived in the far
northwest of India or in the Punjab, since he mentions no place in the interior of India south of the Ganges.2 This is supported by what is definitely known about King Menander, a Bactrian king identified with Milinda.  Much more is known about King Menander. Many of his coins have been found
over a wide area of northern India, as far west as Kabul, as far east as Mathura and as far north as Kashmir. The portrait is sometimes of a young man and other times that of a very old man. Plutarch says, “Menander was a king noted for justice who enjoyed such popularity with his subjects that upon his death, which took place in camp, diverse cities contended for the possession of his ashes. The dispute was settled by the representatives of the different cities agreeing to
divide the relics, and then erecting separate monuments to his memory.”
The recent publication of the Mir Zakah treasure confirms the rule of Menander in Ghazni and adjoining areas of the Kabul valley in the north (there are 521 coins of Menander in that treasure). The discovery of an Attic Tetradrachm of Menander sets speculation at rest; he must have ruled over the Kabul region
. In the north he occupied Hazara and the Swat valley.3 So Menander was one of the most important of those Greek kings who continued in Bactria the dominion founded by Alexander the Great. He probably reigned from about 150 to 110 B.C. (thus dating his conversations not much more than 400
years after the Parinibbāna of the Buddha). Strabo, draws attention in passing to the remarkable way in which the kingdom of Bactria expanded beyond its original limits, and he mentions incidentally that the kings chiefly responsible were Demetrius and Menander ... But Menander left a far deeper mark on the tradition of India than did Demetrius.4 Menander annexed the Indus delta, the peninsula of Surastra (Kathiavar), occupied Mathura on the Jumna, besieged Madyamika (Nagari near Chitor) and Saketam in southern Oudh, and threatened the capital, Pātaliputta. But the invasion was repulsed and Menander was forced to return to his own
country. Since the Bactrians later became Buddhists there can be little doubt that King Menander is indeed the King Milinda referred to in the book. However, the conversations may be just a literary device the author used to add interest. His primary aim is to clarify Buddhist doctrine and to refute the wrong views promulgated by various opponents of Buddhism. The introductory story in the Milinda Pañha concerning Nāgasena’s upbringing is almost identical to the
story of the young Moggaliputta Tissa, which is told in the Mahāvamsa, the Ceylon Chronicles. Moggaliputta Tissa Thera lived about a hundred years before Menander and is mentioned twice in the text [Miln. pp 3,71] so it is probably his story that is the older of the two. However, the Mahāvamsa was written much later, by Mahānāma at the beginning of the 6th century A.D., so the story could have been borrowed by Mahānāma from the Milinda Pañha, which was by then a venerable book edited
by Buddhaghosa. (In the Milinda Tika, a commentary on the Milinda Pañha, it is stated that several verses of prologue and epilogue in the Milinda Pañha were composed by Buddhaghosa). From the supposed conversation that Milinda has with Pūrana Kassapa, Makkhali Gosala and other ascetics5 it is obvious that this introductory story was fabricated by the author since these ascetics were contemporaries of the Buddha. The story is based on the Sāmañña Phala Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya. One point of difference is noteworthy: in the Sāmañña Phala Sutta,6 Prince Ajātasattu goes to see the Buddha but is unable to recognise him; whereas in the introduction to the Milinda Pañha, King Milinda says of Nāgasena, “There is no need to point him out to me,” thus showing his great superiority to Prince Ajātasattu. The Rise of the Magadha Kingdom
In the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta the Buddha predicted that the city of Pātaliputta, which was founded shortly before his death, would become a great city, “Ānanda, among the towns and cities that are centres of congregation and commerce of people of the Aryan race, this new town will become the
greatest city called Pātaliputta, a place where goods are unpacked, sold and distributed, but it will be in danger from flood, fire and internal dissension.”7 The Magadha Kingdom, of which Pātaliputta (modern Patna) was the capital, gradually became the most powerful in all India. In the mid 4th century B.C. a Sudra named Mahāpadma Nanda usurped the throne of the kingdom of Magadha and became the ruler of a kingdom stretching from the Brahmaputra river in the east to the Beas in the west. But beyond the Beas were several small kingdoms. During this period, Alexander the Great conquered Persia and crossed the Hindu Kush into Bactria
(Northern Afghanistan). It took him two years to subdue these inhospitable regions, but in so doing he founded several cities penetrating as far north as Samarkand and Leninabad (in the USSR). Another city has been identified at Charikar (north of Kabul). Hearing about the river Indus he recrossed the Hindu Kush in 327 B.C. and pushed eastwards to Taxila (Takkasīla), but when he reached the Jhelum river he
encountered the Paurava rajah who had war elephants. Even the veterans of Macadonia were unable to continue against such opposition so Alexander was forced to retreat down the Indus river and thence back through Persia, where he died at Babylon in 323 B.C. Nevertheless, he had left behind him the foundations of the Bactrian kingdom and had surveyed the Jhelum and Indus rivers. After Alexander’s death, Chandragupta, the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, was able to drive away
the Greek garrisons from the Indus valley. In 321 B.C. he defeated Nanda and became the ruler of the Magadha kingdom from the capital at Pātaliputta. Alexander’s successor, Seleukos I Nikator, led an expedition against the Indians in 311 B.C. hoping to regain the Punjab. However, he was up against the might of Chandragupta. So, by 304 B.C., Seleukos was glad to conclude a treaty with him, giving his
daughter in marriage and ceding large areas of what is now Baluchistan and Afghanistan in exchange for 500 war elephants. Seleukos sent his ambassador, Magasthenes, to Pātaliputta and from what remains of his writings we know something about the size of the army and the strength of the fortifications there. Chandragupta ruled for 24 years and his son Bindusāra, about whom we know very little, ruled for 28 years until his death in 269 B.C. At the time of Bindusāra’s death his eldest son was the viceroy at Takkasīla and his younger son, Asoka, was the viceroy at Ujjeni in the south. Asoka fought with his brother for the right to ascend to the throne, and when his brother was killed in battle, Asoka became the ruler of a vast empire from Bengal to Afghanistan. However, he was still not satisfied and it was only in the ninth year of his reign, after
the bloody conquest of the Kalinga kingdom (Orissa) that he gave up warfare and became a devoted follower of Buddhism. Emperor Asoka sent missions of monks to the border areas of his great empire. Asokan inscriptions have been found in the Kabul valley written in Greek and Aramaic, and elsewhere his inscriptions say that he had made Dhamma conquests in Egypt, Syria, Macedonia, Greece, Cyprus, Bactria, Kashmir, Gandhāra, etc. The Mahāvamsa says that missionaries were sent to Kashmir,
Gandhāra, Bactria, the Himalayas, Sindh (Gujarat), and inscriptions on relic caskets found in stūpas at Sanchi record the success of those missions to the Himalayas. Unfortunately, the other stūpa records have been vandalised, but we can be sure that the missions to Kashmir and Gandhāra were successful since even in the Buddha’s time Takkasīla was a renowned centre of learning. The Mahāvamsa also
records that at the consecration of the Great Stūpa in 157 B.C. monks came from Alasanda (Charika) in Yona (Bactria). The Rise of the Bactrian KingdomAfter the death of Asoka in 227 B.C. the Mauryan empire began to disintegrate. The empire founded by
Seleukos had already revolted in 250 B.C. under its governor, Diodotus I and it continued to grow under his successors, Diodotus II and Euthydemus. At the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. the Greek rulers of the new kingdom of Bactria crossed the Hindu Kush and began to invade India from the northwest. Of the Greek kings who ruled to the south of the Kush, Apollodotus would seem to be the first. He is
twice mentioned in association with Menander. Their rule extended on the south west to Ariana (southern Afghanistan) and in the south to the Indus valley. As mentioned above, Menander must have ruled over the Kabul and Swat valleys and at some time he annexed the Indus valley too. Sāgala, the city mentioned in the Milinda Pañha as the place where the
dialogues took place, was the ancient city of the Madras who came to the region in about the 6th century B.C. It is now Sialkot between the Chenab and Ravi rivers, near the border of Kashmir. At Miln. p.83 (see Question 5, page 26) it is mentioned that Kashmir is 12 yojanas (84 miles) distant and that Milinda’s birth place on the island of Alasanda is 200 yojanas away. There are many cities founded by
Alexander during his conquests, several of which might have been the birth place of Menander. The city founded at Charikar has been suggested by A.K. Narain but it is rather less than 200 yojanas (1400 miles) at the usual reckoning. Could it perhaps be the Alexandra located at Leninabad or one of the Alexandras further West? However, from the available evidence we can postulate that Menander was born in Bactria, but brought
up in Ariana (the Kabul valley) and in the early years of his rule expanded his father’s kingdom to the Indus valley and beyond, perhaps later establishing his capital at Sāgala. Unlike Bactria, which was predominantly influenced by Greek culture, these new areas were already Buddhist. Menander, then, would have been educated in the Greek traditions but would have had direct contact with Buddhism
and no doubt often met monks living in his kingdom. Nevertheless, it does seem rather improbable that his knowledge of doctrine would have been sufficient to engage in the dialogues as recorded in the Milinda Pañha since Milinda is shown to have a substantial knowledge of the texts. My opinion is that the author had at most a brief acquaintance with Menander, most probably basing his work on an oral
tradition of the dialogues and using his own deep knowledge of the texts to extend the dialogues into the longer work that we have now. He might have used the dialogues as a device to add interest to his treatise and to please the Greek king by making him one of the central characters. This hypothesis gains some support from the existence of Chinese translations of the Milinda Pañha that
consist of only the first three divisions. They are almost identical with the Pali as to the questions asked but differ in the introductory story, which in neither case looks very authentic. Comparison with the Chinese TextAs V. Trenchner pointed out when he transliterated the Pali text in the 1860’s, we can be sure that the
original Milinda Pañha was in Sanskrit because it begins with the words “Tam yathā nusuyatā” (thus has it been handed down) rather than the Pali formula “Evam me sutam” (thus have I heard). This is confirmed by the presence of Chinese translations of the text which, although they obviously come from the same root source, show a number of notable differences.8 The Chinese versions correspond to the first three divisions of the Pali version, suggesting that the other four divisions (Paradoxes, A Question solved by Inference, Ascetic Practices, and the Similes) were later accretions. The Chinese work, the Nāgasena-bhikshusūtra takes the name of the monk. The Pali work, the Milinda Pañha, the name of the king. The Pali work has twelve extra questions. The stories of the former lives of Nāgasena and Milinda are different.
There is no mention of the Abhidhamma in the Chinese. It is frequently mentioned in the Pali. On the very well known classification of the Bodhipakkhiya Dhammas the Chinese translator goes astray on several terms, indicating that he was not familiar with the Pali texts.
The Pali says that animals have wise attention, but not wisdom; the Chinese says they have wisdom but their hearts are different.
Although there are many minor differences between the two texts, the close correlation between the
similes used to illustrate the terms defined and the order of the questions, leaves us with no doubt that they are both translations of an older work (probably in Sanskrit). However, we should be cautious when drawing conclusions as to which is the more authentic. Bhikkhu Thich Mihn Chau, in his efforts to prove the greater antiquity of the original on which the Chinese translation is based, dates it soon after
the demise of the Buddha citing the absence of classification of the texts into Vinaya, Sutta, Abhidhamma, and Nikāyas, which were only well defined at the Third Council. Yet, Menander was not even born until 100 years after this council. Clearly, the ‘original’ is not earlier than the 1st century B.C. and the long gap before the translations appeared, in about 400 A.D., was ample time for numerous accretions and amendments, or omissions and lacunas to occur. For the reasons already stated above and because the conversations in the Milinda Pañha were said to have taken place about 500 years after the Buddha’s death, whereas Menander lived at least a hundred years earlier than that it seems most likely that the Milinda Pañha was composed some time after
Menander’s death, perhaps being based on an oral tradition of actual conversations that did take place between Menander and a monk or several monks. Menander’s successors, Queen Agathocleia and Strato I Soter, continued to reign for at least 40 years after his death but their lives saw the emergence of a new dynasty in western India, that of the Sakas
(Scythians) and Yueh-Chih from central Asia, and the Greek Bactrian era came to an end. The Arrangement of the Pali BookThe epilogue says that the book is divided into 6 divisions and 22 chapters containing 262 questions, 42
of which have not been handed down making 304 in all, but it is difficult to see how this is reckoned. There are numerous discrepancies between the different texts available, which is to be expected in such an old work. Now only 237 questions remain. I have followed the Pali text in grouping the questions and naming the chapters, except that I have
condensed the seven chapters of the Similes into one. Although I have followed the general arrangement of the Pali text, I have left out large numbers of similes and condensed long, though often very eloquent passages, (without, I hope, spoiling the beauty of the original work) in order to make the book reasonably concise and thus make it more appealing to the busy western reader. It is an
abridgement, not a translation, therefore here and there I have combined separate paragraphs into one for the sake of brevity, but I have endeavoured to be faithful to the intention of the original author, which was the clarification of the Buddha’s teaching and the elucidation of some common misconceptions that one may fall into. The references in the footnotes are to page numbers of the Pali texts of the Pali Text Society. In the
corresponding translations these page numbers are given in square brackets at the top of each left-hand page or, in the case of Vinaya and Jātaka books, in the body of the text. To help those who would like to know the Pali word from which its translation derives (which is sometimes different to that used by Rhys Davids or Miss Horner) I have included Pali words in the index
alongside the English reference. I have also compiled a list of quotations from the scriptures given by the author of the Milinda Pañha and a few other passages found only in Milinda Pañha, which might be of interest for further study. For those unfamiliar with Buddhist terminology I have included a glossary of Pali terms with a brief explanation of their significance. |
