The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.134

c12.134

This hypothesis of a Greek Questions of Menander will explain a number of things, and is required in order to explain them. I have already mentioned the curious way in which the author of Part 1 of the Milinda takes certain things for granted—that his Indian readers would know what Menander’s Yonakas were and would know that the lay-out of the four-square Hellenistic city was the normal one; if he was taking these things from a Greek work that would be explained, as would his use of the Hellenistic Greek word Yonaka and his placing of Greeks before Kshatriyas and Brahmans. His knowledge of Menander’s birthplace and of the mixed nationalities on his Council he *might* have had himself, though it would be more natural to suppose that they were taken from the Greek work; but if the names of Menander’s four Yonakas are historical, and as we saw there is a possibility of this, they *must* have come from the Greek work; and if what I have said in Appendix 6 be correct, the fact that Menander’s birthplace is said to have been near *Alexandria* instead of near Kapisa is very likely due to the Greek work also.¹ The Greek work, too, if (*ex hypothesi*) it were suggested by one or more of the lists of Alexander-questions, must have contained some *aporiai*—as a matter of historical development it could not do otherwise—and that would explain the fact that the author of Part I of the Milinda represents Milinda in the Introduction as eager to score a dialectical victory, while in the body of the book he makes little attempt to do so. And it would explain, not only why the Indian author chose a Greek king as one protagonist, but also why he chose an invented character, Nāgasena, for the other: Nāgasena came from the Greek work, like the Yonakas, and was invented as the Indians in the Alexander-questions were invented.