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THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA.
P. 53. Virtue's the base.' It should have been pointed out that this is the celebrated verse given by the Ceylon scholars to Buddhaghosa as the theme of the test essay he was to write as a proof of his fitness. If he succeeded in the essay they would then entrust him with all their traditions for him to recast in Páli. The • Path of Purity,' which opens with this verse, was the result.
P. 185, § 49. On the question discussed in this section the curious may compare what is said by Sir Thomas Brown in his 'Enquiries into. Vulgar and Common Errors,' Book VII, Chapter xvi (p. 304 of the London edition of 1686). He gives several instances of supposed cases of conception without sexual connection mentioned in western writers, and comes to the conclusion, apropos of the supposed generation of the magician Merlin by Satan, that generations by the devil are very improbable.'
I had desired to dedicate this translation of the Milinda to Mr. Trenckner, to whose self-denying labours, spread over many years, we owe the edition of the Pali text on which the translation is based, and without which the translation would not have been attempted. But I am now informed that any dedication of a single volume in the series of the 'Sacred Books of the East' is not allowable, as it would conflict with the dedication of the entire series. Had I known this when the Introduction was being written, a more suitable acknowledgment of the debt due to Mr. Trenckner than the few words on page xv, would have been made at the close of the Introductory remarks. I am permitted therefore to add here what was intended to appear in the dedication as an expression of the gratitude which all interested in historical research must feel to a scholar who has devoted years of labour, and of labour rendered valuable by the highest training and critical scholarship, to a field of enquiry in which the only fruit to be gathered is knowledge.
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