Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c6.s1.22

c6.s1.22

Nothing more definite can be learned from the *Milindapañha*, on which, however, much stress has been been laid in support of the antiquity of the Tripiṭaka, on the score that practically the whole of the Piṭakas were known and regarded as a final authority when the work was produced, that is in the north-west of India about the time of the Christian era. The fatal defect of this argument,⁴ which its author has unhappily still overlooked, is that the quotations from the Piṭakas which establish his thesis are confined to Books IV to VII and to passages in the earlier books which are not the slightest evidence that they ever rested on any ancient tradition and they abound in admitted absurdities.