The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.14

c12.14

There are however two preliminary points. It has been suggested that certain passages in the Pali text of book I of the Milinda are interpolations;¹ but, if they are, it happens that none of them are material for what I want, so this need not be considered. More important is the widespread belief that the Pali text is not the original, but is a translation of a work written either in Sanscrit or some northern Prakrit.² Part of the argument for this is philological and must be left to Pali scholars, but there has also been a desire to account for differences in the Pali and Chinese versions by supposing both to be translations from a common original. This supposition does not commend itself to me.³ It is hard to believe that a Chinese translator some five centuries later, dealing with a foreign language and a long forgotten geography, would be bound to reproduce his original unaltered, even if (a large assumption) he desired to do so (one could find many analogies); and it is said that the Chinese text itself has been subject to revisions and modifications,⁴ which must surely affect the question. The question then whether the Pali text be original or derivative is one for philology, but it does not affect what I have to say, which, put briefly, is this: there are in the Pali Milinda as we have it certain small but quite definite Hellenistic Greek elements which cannot be explained on any current theory. I must now examine these and see whither they lead us. These Greek elements can more or less be dated; to date the Pali text of Part I is not my province, but reason may appear for suggesting a terminus post quem non.