The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s4.288

c10.s4.288

The idea that Menander ever became a Buddhist in the sense of entering the Order may be dismissed at once; it depends on the story in the second part of the Milinda, which is not history, for the historical Menander did not retire from the world and hand over his throne to his son, but died leaving a son who was a minor and for whom his widow at first ruled as regent. He had an enormous number of Buddhist subjects and he probably could not have maintained his power without their support; politically, therefore, he must have done whatever seemed advisable to ensure that support, for no other course was open to him. It was traditional among Hellenistic rulers to respect, and even to be helpful to, the various religions of the peoples they ruled; but, except for Alexander’s relations with Ammon, perhaps the only case known prior to Menander in which they took any *personal* interest in those religions is that of the elder Stratonice, wife and widow of Antiochus I; she at one time belonged to a club in Smyrna whose members were associated for the worship of Anubis, conductor of souls to the land of immortality.² It is perfectly possible that Menander went further, politically, than the usual practice, and that he did take a personal interest in Buddhism in the same sort of way that Cleopatra VII was to take a personal interest in the religion of Egypt;³ but there is no historical tradition. The Questions of Ptolemy II (see Excursus) do not prove that Ptolemy took a personal interest in Judaism, still less that he adopted that faith; and even if the germ of the Milindapañha be a brief Greek Questions of Menander, that would not prove that Menander took a personal interest in Buddhism, still less that he became a Buddhist, even in the sense of giving to that religion the same sort of intellectual assent that was given by many a layman; all it would prove would be that he was a great king, one to whom stories might be attached. It is certain enough, of course, that some Indians were of opinion that he stood very close to Buddhism—the mere existence of the Milinda, and the transfer to Menander of stories told of Buddha and Asoka, prove that much, and it may be one reason why he does not appear in the Mahābhārata; but that does not answer the question whether the acts on which these opinions were based were dictated by personal feeling, by policy, or by the same mixture of both as is to be found in Cleopatra’s case. No one can prove that Menander was *not* a Buddhist; but his adoption as his coin-type of the one Greek deity who was practically never equated with anything Oriental, Athena, is against it, and on what is known it seems to me quite unsafe to call him a Buddhist even in the limited sense in which Antigonus Gonatas, the nearest analogy, is sometimes called a Stoic. Further than this I do not see how to go.