The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.145

c12.145

The end was that, just as Pseudo-Aristeas saw in the Questions of Ptolemy II a useful peg on which to hang a tractate on Judaism, so some Indian Buddhist saw in the Greek Questions of Menander a setting which could conveniently be utilised for a treatise on Buddhism. We have seen that the Greek work, assuming that it existed, must have been written very soon after Menander’s death and, if it reached the library at Alexandria, must have reached it by or before 100 B.C.; and as Part I of the Pali Milinda (or the Indian work of which it is a translation, if it really be a translation) has to fall in the period when Greek was colloquially spoken in India and Indians might know Greek works, I do not see how it can be much *later* than 100 B.C., which would give ample time for intermediate developments. It might be earlier; it must surely be before the Greeks in India began to be Indianised (Chap. IX) and the Sacas began to break up the Indo-Greek world.