The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.139

c12.139

And if the author of Part I of the Pali Milinda could and did read Greek, it does help out what some Pali scholars have felt about that work taken as a whole. Rhys Davids (I p. xii) called it ‘the only prose work composed in ancient India which would be considered, from the modern point of view, as a successful work of art’. Finot (p. 14), after observing that the vivacity and sobriety of the dialogue resembled the Socratic dialogues rather than anything Indian, said ‘On serait même enclin à reconnaître dans cette forme originale et presque insolite une influence hellénique’. Winternitz (II p. 141) said that it was so alive and fresh that it well supported comparison with the Dialogues of Plato.¹ Evidently some Pali scholars have felt about the Milinda much as most people have felt about Ecclesiastes, that at some time the author had read Greek literature and breathed Greek air; and if this be true, Part II cannot be later than the first century B.C., seeing that Greek rule ended altogether about 30 B.C., and the earlier in that century the better (see also p. 433 n. 1). It would be interesting to know how it is proposed to reconcile this Greek atmosphere of the Pali Milinda with the common belief that it is a derivative document from an Indian original (p. 416); a translator could hardly maintain that atmosphere if he found it or create it if he did not. I venture to think my own explanation preferable.