Questions of King Milinda Part 01

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

Page 19

xvi
THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
Buddhaghosa wrote his great works, that is about 430 A.D., he had before him a book giving the conversations between Milinda and Nagasena. And more than that. He introduces his comment above referred to on the Ambattha Sutta by saying, after simply quoting the words of the text he is explaining : What would be the use of any one else saying anything on this? For Nâgasena, the Elder, himself said as follows in reply to Milinda, the king 1'and he then quotes Någasena, and adds not a word of his own. It follows that the greatest of all Buddhist writers known to us by name regarded the Questions of Milinda' as a work of so great authority that an opinion put by its author into the mouth of Nagasena should be taken as decisive. And this is not only the only book, outside the Pali Pitakas, which Buddhaghosa defers to in this way, it is the only book, except the previous commentaries, which he is known even to refer to at all. But, on the other hand, he says nothing in these passages to throw any further light on the date, or any light on the authorship, of the work to which he assigns so distinguished, even so unique, a position.
So far as to what is known about our Questions of Milinda' in Ceylon. The work also exists, certainly in Páli, and probably in translations into the local dialects, in Burma and Siam. For Mr. Trenckner mentions (Introduction, p. iv) a copy in the Burmese character of the Pali text sent to him by Dr. Rost, there is another copy in that character in the Colombo Museum?, and Mr. J. G. Scott, of the Burmese Civil Service, has sent to England a Burmese Nissaya of the Milinda (a kind of translation, giving the Pali text, word for word, followed by the interpretation of those words in Burmese). A manuscript of the Pali text, brought from Siam, is referred to in the Simhalese MSS. in the marginal note quoted by Mr. Trenckner at p. vi of the
"Kim ettha anena vattabbam? Vuttam etam Nâga senat theren' eva Milinda-ra nfâ putthena .... (Sumangala Vilâsini, loc. cit.).
See p. 51 of the Journal of the Pali Text Society' for 1882. . This Nissaya is now in the possession of his brother, the Bursar of St. John's College, Cambridge.
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