The History of Buddhist Thought c26.60

c26.60

² The *Milinda-pañha*, “Questions of Milinda,” is a work now existing in Pāli (transl. Rhys Davids, 1890–4). It consists of dialogues between king Milinda and a Buddhist sage Nāgasena discussing many points of Buddhist doctrine. The Milinda of the legendary setting is a reminiscence of the Bactrian king Menander of the second century B.C. To what school it belonged is unknown, and it is unlikely that its original language was Pāli. The date may be the first or second century A.D. Its rationalistic tone once made it a convenient means of reading into the Pāli Canon the view that original Buddhism was “agnostic atheism”. It has not been used here, as it is quite impossible to treat its doctrines as authoritative for Theravāda, or as anything more than the individual views of a member of an unknown Hīnayāna sect. Mrs. Rhys Davids thinks that the author (or authors) was not even a Buddhist. See *Milinda Questions*, p. 18.