Questions of King Milinda Part 01

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

Page 23

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THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
He was, he says, as a ruler noted for justice, and enjoyed such popularity with his subjects, that upon his death, which took place in camp, diverse cities contended for the possession of his ashes. The dispute was only adjusted by the representatives of the cities agreeing that the relics should be divided amongst them, and that they should severally erect monuments (urnuria, no doubt dagabas or sthapas) to his memory.
This last statement is very curious as being precisely analogous to the statement in the Book of the Great Decease 1,' as to what occurred after the death of the Buddha himself. But it would be very hazardous to draw any conclusion from this coincidence.
The only remaining ancient evidence about MenanderMilinda (apart from what is said by our author himself), is that of coins. And, as is usually the case, the evidence of the coins will be found to confirm, but to add very little to, what is otherwise known.
As many as twenty-two different coins have been discovered, some of them in very considerable numbers, bearing the name, and eight of them the effigy, of Menander. They have been found over a very wide extent of country, as far west as Kabul, as far east as Mathurâ, and one of them as far north as Kashmîr.' Curiously enough we find a confirmation of this wide currency of Menander-Milinda's coins in the work of the anonymous author of the ‘Periplus Maris Erythræi.' He says that Menander's coins, together with those of Apollodotos, were current, many years after his death, at Barygaza, the modern Baroach, on the coast of Gujarat.
The portrait on the coins is very characteristic, with a long face and an intelligent expression, and is sometimes that of a young man, and at other times that of a very old man. It may be inferred therefore that his reign
1 Mahâparinibbâna Suttanta VI, 58-62, translated in my Buddhist Suttas' (vol. xi of the Sacred Books of the East), pp. 133-135.
· This number would be greatly increased if the differences of the monograms were allowed for.
: Chapter 47 of Müller's edition.
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