The Questions of King Milinda — Anonymous
The Questions of King Milinda Translated from the Pâli by T. W. Rhys Davids Part I of II Volume XXXV of "The Sacred Books of the East" Oxford: The Clarendon Press [1890] Scanned at sacred-texts.com, May 2003. John B. Hare, Redactor. This text is in the public domain. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice of attribution is left intact. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. THE work of which a translation is here, for the first time, presented to the English reading public, has had a strange and interesting history. Written in Northern India, at or a little after the beginning of the Christian era, and either in Sanskrit itself or in some North Indian Prakrit, it has been entirely lost in the land of its origin, and (so far as is at present known) is not extant in any of the homes of the various sects and schools of the Buddhists, except only in Ceylon, and in those countries which have derived their Buddhism from Ceylon. It is true that General Cunningham says 1 that the name of Milinda, 'is still famous in all Buddhist countries.' But he is here drawing a very wide conclusion from an isolated fact. For in his note he refers only to Hardy, who is good evidence for Ceylon, but who does not even say that the 'Milinda' was known elsewhere. Preserved there, and translated at a very early date into Pâli, it has become, in its southern home, a book of standard authority, is put into the hands of those who have begun to doubt the cardinal points of Buddhist doctrine, has been long a popular work in its Pâli form, has been translated into Si m halese, and occupies a unique position, second only to the Pâli Pi t akas (and perhaps also to the celebrated work of Buddhaghosa, the 'Path of Purity'). From Ceylon it has been transferred, in its Pâli form, to both Burma and Siam, and in those countries also it enjoys so high a repute, that it has been commented on (if not translated). It is not merely the only work composed among the Northern Buddhists which is regarded with reverence by the orthodox Buddhists of the southern schools; it is the only one which has survived at all amongst them. And it is the only prose work composed in ancient India which would be considered, from the modern point of view, as a successful work of art. The external evidence for these statements is, at present, both very slight and, for the most part, late. There appeared at Colombo in the year of Buddha 2420 (1877 A.D.) a volume of 650 pages, large 8vo.--the most considerable in point of size as yet issued from the Si m halese press--entitled MILINDA PRA SN AYA. It was published at the expense of five Buddhist gentlemen whose names deserve to be here recorded. They are Karolis Pîris, Abraham Liwerâ, Luis Mendis, Nandis Mendis Amara-sekara, and Chârlis Arnolis Mendis Wijaya-ratna Amara-sekara. It is stated in the preface that the account of the celebrated discussion held between Milinda and Nâgasena, about 500 years after the death of the Buddha, was translated into the Mâgadhî language by 'teachers of old' (purwâ k ârin wisin);--that that Pâli version was translated into Si m halese, at the instance and under the patronage of King Kîrtti Srî Râga-si m ha, who came to the throne of Ceylon in the year of Buddha 2290 (1747 A. D.), by a member of the Buddhist Order named Hîna t i-kumburê Suma n gala, a lineal successor, in the line of teacher and pupil (anu s ishya), of the celebrated Wœliwi t a Sara n a n kara, who had been appointed Sa m gha-râ g a, or chief of the Order--that 'this priceless book, unsurpassable as a means either for learning the Buddhist doctrine, or for growth in the knowledge of it, or for the suppression of erroneous opinions,' had become corrupt by frequent copying--that, at the instigation of the well-known scholar Moho tt i-watte Gunânanda, these five had had the texts corrected and restored by several learned Bhikkhus (kîpa namak lawâ), and had had indices and a glossary added, and now published the thus revised and improved edition. The Si m halese translation, thus introduced to us, follows the Pâli throughout, except that it here and there adds, in the way of gloss, extracts from one or other of the numerous Pi t aka texts referred to, and also that it starts with a prophecy, put into the mouth of the Buddha when on his death-bed, that this discussion would take place about 500 years after his death, and that it inserts further, at the point indicated in my note on p. 3 of the present version, an account of how the Si m halese translator came to write his version. His own account of the matter adds to the details given above that he wrote the work at the Uposatha Ârâma of the Mahâ Wihâra near S rî-ward-hana-pura, 'a place famous for the possession of a temple containing the celebrated Tooth Relic, and a monastery which had been the residence of Wœliwi t a Sara n a n kara, the Sa m gha-râga, and of the famous scholars and commentators Darami t i-pola Dhamma-rakkhita and Madhurasato t a Dhammakkhandha.' As Kîrtti S rî Râga-si m ha reigned till 1781 1 , this would only prove that our Pâli work was extant in Ceylon in its present form, and there regarded as of great antiquity and high authority, towards the close of the last century. And no other mention of the work has, as yet, been discovered in any older Si m halese author. But in the present deplorable state of our ignorance of the varied and ancient literature of Ceylon, the argument ex silentio would be simply of no value. Now that the Ceylon Government have introduced into the Legislative Council a bill for the utilisation, in the interests of education, of the endowments of the Buddhist monasteries, it may be hoped that the value of the books written in those monasteries will not be forgotten, and that a sufficient yearly sum will be put aside for the editing and publication of a literature of such great historical value 2 . At present we can only deplore the impossibility of tracing the history of the 'Questions of Mil