Milinda
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA
Milindapañha
Praise to the Bhagavat, the Arahat, the perfect Buddha
(1)
The king named Milinda approached Nâgasena at Sâgala,
the matchless city, like the Gangâ going to the ocean.
Drawing near to the eloquent torch-bearer and dispeller of darkness,
the king asked him many abstruse questions.....
The solutions to the problems involved profound meanings,
going to the heart, pleasing to the ear, wonderful, astounding,
plunging into Abhidhamma, Vinaya, and Suttas....
Nâgasena and Milinda (1-4, 21-24)
The chariot and the non-person (25-28)
The goal of going forth (31-32)
Personal identity and rebirth (40-41)
The veneration of relics (177-179)
The conversion of Milinda (419-420)
NOTES
The Milindapañha (Milinda-questions) is a Pali book dating from around the beginning of the current era (1st century C.E.). It is a philosophical discourse in the form of a dialogue between a Theravada monk named Nâgasena and a king called Milinda. There was in fact a king of that name in the 2nd century C.E. Milinda is a Pali form of Greek Menandros (Latin Menander); he was a Greek king of Bactria (Afghanistan). By the fifth century C.E. Buddhaghosa was quoting the book as an authoritative text, but it is not part of the Pali Canon.
In its arguments much use is made of analogies. The chariot simile is the famous one.
Sometimes there are apparent contradictions in the tradition, and the veneration of relics is one such case (see 37-42 above) .
Available translations of The Questions of King Milinda are by T.W. Rhys Davids (Sacred Books of the East, 1890), I.B. Horner (Pali Text Society, 1963), and selections in E. Conze, Buddhist Scriptures.