The Greeks in Bactria and India c12.7

c12.7

The work is cast in the form of a dialogue between Menander and a Buddhist sage Nāgasena, with an introduction in which Menander, at his capital Sāgala, appears as a great king fond of learned disputations, together with his 500 Yonakas, four of whom play a part in setting the scene for the dialogue proper. In the first part Menander’s professed object is not the pursuit of knowledge but a dialectical victory over Nāgasena, though he does not in fact keep his end up very well. In the second part, in which Menander gives Nāgasena a succession of dilemmas to solve, the king has become a Buddhist devotee humbly seeking knowledge, who at the end forsakes his throne and the world and enters the Order. Part II, notwithstanding its merits as literature—has it not preserved for us the Song of the Two Fairy Birds?—has no pretensions to be history; what I shall have to say deals with Part I. The charm with which the whole work is written and its importance for Buddhist doctrine—it stands just outside the Tripitaka, the Pali Canon of Buddhist Scriptures¹—has led to it being much treated by Indian and Buddhist scholars, but chiefly of course for its doctrinal content; and it has been asserted, in all good faith but without sufficient knowledge from the Greek side, that it has no value for history and contains no trace of anything Greek.² It has never been examined by any Greek scholar, and it is time that this should be done. With Buddhist doctrine I am not concerned; my aim is to try to get the relation of Part I to Greek rule in India.