Questions of King Milinda Part 01

SR No.: 007681
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1890
Total Pages: 2695
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 63

THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
in the Arahat, the Supreme Buddha), who would be able to talk with me, and resolve my doubts?'
11. Thereupon the five hundred Yonakas said to Milinda the king: 'There are the six Masters, O king!-Purana Kassapa, Makkhali of the cowshed1, the Nigantha of the Nâta clan, Sangaya the son of the Belattha woman, Agita of the garment of hair, and Pakudha Kakkâyana. These are well known as famous founders of schools, followed by bands of disciples and hearers, and highly honoured by the people. Go, great king! put to them your problems, and have your doubts resolved '.'
12. So king Milinda, attended by the five hundred Yonakas, mounted the royal car with its splendid equipage, and went out to the dwellingplace of Purana Kassapa, exchanged with him the compliments of friendly greeting, and took his seat courteously apart. And thus sitting he said to
I, 11.
1 So called because he was said to have been born in a cowshed. See the Sumangala, p. 143. All these six teachers were contemporaries of the Buddha, and lived therefore about five hundred years before Milinda.
All this is a mere echo of the opening paragraphs in the Sâmañña-phala (D. 2), where Agâtasattu is described as visiting these six famous sophists. And the plagiarism is all the more inartistic as the old names are retained, and no explanation is given of their being born twice at an interval of five hundred years. One may indeed ask what is a glaring anachronism to our good Buddhist romancer compared with the advantage of introducing the stock-names when he has to talk of heretics? But the whole book is so full of literary skill, that it is at least strange that its author should have made this blunder; and there are other reasons for thinking the whole episode an interpolation. (See note on §§ 13, 15.) So that probably our § 15 came originally immediately after § 10, and then (after the episode in §§ 15-36) § 37 takes up the narrative interrupted at the end of § 10.
Digitized by Google