The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.48

c12.48

The next point is whether Menander’s birthplace is historical or not. Seeing that the author of the Greek allusions in the Pali Milinda, whether he were the Pali writer or another, was very near in time to Menander, it would be absurd to reject his evidence about the birthplace; it is very much better than the evidence for most people’s birthplaces in the Hellenistic world. In the Pali text Menander was born in a village called Kalasi not far from Alasanda (Alexandria of the Caucasus) and 200 yojanas from Sāgala;⁴ I need not go into the distance, as Professor Rapson has said all that is necessary.⁵ The name of the village has been doubted, because the Pali text also makes Nāgasena born in a village called Kajangala under the Himalayas, and the only known village of that name was on the Ganges it has been suggested that a later interpolator added names at random;⁶ but the argument is not a valid one, for it makes the untenable assumption that there cannot have been a second village of the same name. Another writer has proposed to correct Kalasi into Kapisa;⁷ but an Indian author of the North-West would not have called Kapisa a village, and it is not scientific to turn an unknown name into a known one without some clear reason. In any case, whether the unknown name Kalasi be correct or not, we have the invaluable fact that Menander was born in a village. Hellenistic queens did not live in villages, neither were Hellenistic princes born in them; consequently—and this is the point which matters—Menander was born a commoner, and was not therefore a Euthydemid (see further p. 141).