Questions of King Milinda Part 01

Author(s): T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford

Page 15

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THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
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 Simhalese press-entitled MILINDA PRASNAYA. It was published at the expense of five Buddhist gentlemen whose names deserve to be here recorded. They are Karolis Pîris, Abraham Liwera, 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 Nagasena, about 500 years after the death of the Buddha, was translated into the Magadhî language by 'teachers of old '(purwâkârîn wisin);—that that Pâli version was translated into Simhalese, at the instance and under the patronage of King Kîrtti Sri Råga-simha, who came to the throne of Ceylon in the year of Buddha 2290 (1747 A.D.), by a member of the Buddhist Order named Hînatikumburê Sumangala, a lineal successor, in the line of teacher and pupil (anusishya), of the celebrated Woliwita Saranankara, who had been appointed Samgharåga, 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 Mohotti-watte Gunânanda, these five had had the texts corrected and restored by several learned Bhikkhus (kîpa namak lawa), and had had indices and a glossary added, and now published the thus revised and improved edition.
The Simhalese 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 Pitaka texts referred to, and also that it starts with a pro
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