The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s2.15

v1.c30.s2.15

Menander is the only Yavana who has become celebrated in the ancient literature of India. He is unquestionably to be identified with Milinda, the Yavana king of Çākala (Siālkot), who is one of the two leading characters in the Milindapañha, the ‘Questions of Milinda,’ a Pāli treatise on the fundamental principles of Buddhist philosophy. It is in the form of a dialogue between the king, who had become notorious as ‘harassing the brethren by putting puzzles to them of heretical tendency,’ and the Buddhist elder, Nāgasena, who triumphantly solves these puzzles and succeeds in converting his royal antagonist. It is thus as a philosopher, and not as a mighty conqueror, that Menander, like Janamejaya, king of the Kurus, and Janaka, king of Videha, in the Upanishads, has won for himself an abiding fame.