Milindapanha (The Questions of King Milinda)

01The chariot

The first meeting goes straight to the hardest question. The king asks the monk his name. “I am known as Nagasena, but that is only a name; no person is found here.” Milinda pounces: then who is talking? Nagasena asks how the king came. By chariot. Is the pole the chariot? The axle? The wheels? The king says no to each. Then where is the chariot? It is a name, the king admits, for all the parts put together. “Just so, great king, is Nagasena.” And he quotes the nun Vajira: as with the parts there is the word chariot, so with the aggregates there is the convention, a being.

02A Greek king in Bharat

Milinda is the Pali name of Menander, who ruled from Sagala, the present Sialkot, in the 2nd century BCE. He is known from his coins far better than from any chronicle: thousands survive, Greek on one side and Kharosthi Prakrit on the other, and a few carry a wheel that many read as the dharmachakra. Plutarch, writing in Greek, records that when Menander died in camp the cities quarrelled over his ashes and divided them, each raising a monument, as the Buddha’s relics had once been shared. The text calls Sagala a city of the Yonakas, full of parks, lakes and learned men.

03How Nagasena came to Sagala

The opening book gives the setting as a sacred account of past lives. The king silenced every teacher in Sagala with his questions, and the sangha in the Himalaya resolved to meet him. A deva named Mahasena agreed to be born as the son of the brahmana Sonuttara of Kajangala village, and the elder Rohana went to that house for alms every day for seven years and ten months before he was even greeted. The boy learned the three Vedas, found them lacking, and became Rohana’s pupil. He studied under Assagutta at Vattaniya, learned the whole Tipitaka from Dhammarakkhita at the Ashokarama in Pataliputra, and reached arahantship there.

04Neither the same nor another

If there is no fixed self, the king asks, is the one who is reborn the same person or another? Neither the same nor another, Nagasena replies. Was the king as a tiny infant lying on his back the same as the king now grown? No. Then is there no mother of the embryo, no father, no teacher? Nagasena turns to a lamp. A man lights a lamp at dusk and it burns all night. Is the flame of the first watch the flame of the middle watch, or of the last? No, yet it is one lamp that burned through the night. So a stream of states continues, one arising as another ceases.

05Dilemmas and similes

The later books set out dilemmas, places where the Buddha’s words seem to clash. If the Buddha has passed beyond, does an offering at his shrine bear fruit? If he knew everything, why did he ordain Devadatta, who would split the sangha? Nagasena resolves each with a simile from everyday life: the seed and the tree for karma, the mango stolen from another’s tree for the continuity of deeds, the flame passed from lamp to lamp. The questions are sharp and the king is no fool. The book’s pleasure lies in watching two clever minds meet.

06The city of dhamma

How can the king know the Buddha existed, if he never saw him? Nagasena answers with a city. When a traveller sees a well-planned city, its walls and gates, its market and its streets, he knows a skilled architect laid it out, though he never met him. So the Buddha built a city of dhamma, with virtue for its wall, shame of wrongdoing for its moat, knowledge for its gateway and the suttas for its streets. Whoever walks through it knows its builder. The Anumanapanha is one of the most admired passages in Pali prose.

07The king’s choice

At the close of the Pali text Milinda is satisfied. He has a vihara built for Nagasena, called the Milinda Vihara, and supports the elder and his monks. Then, the text says, delighted by the elder’s wisdom, he hands the kingdom to his son, goes forth as a monk and attains arahantship. A shorter version of the dialogue survives in Chinese as the Nagasena Bhikshu Sutra, which keeps the opening books and lacks most of the dilemmas, a sign of how the Pali text grew as it was handed down in Lanka.

08Its place among the books

In Myanmar the Milindapanha is counted within the Khuddaka Nikaya itself, and it was carved on the Kuthodaw marble slabs with the rest of the canon. Elsewhere in the Theravada world it is held in honour just outside it. Buddhaghosa quotes it as an authority in his commentaries. T. W. Rhys Davids translated it into English in two volumes of the Sacred Books of the East (1890, 1894), and Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap made a Hindi translation, so that Nagasena’s chariot is now taught in Hindi classrooms as well as in monasteries.

What it contains

1. 1
   Bahirakatha बाहिरकथा

   The outer frame: the city of Sagala, the past lives of Milinda and Nagasena in the time of Kassapa Buddha, and Nagasena’s training. It ends with the king’s first encounters with the monks of Sagala.

2. 2
   Lakkhanapanha लक्खणपञ्ह

   Questions on the marks and characteristics of things. It opens with the chariot simile and treats rebirth, wisdom, faith and the five aggregates.

3. 3
   Vimaticchedanapanha विमतिच्छेदनपञ्ह

   Questions that cut off doubt, on karma, rebirth, memory and the Buddha. Here the king puts the questions he has carried for years.

4. 4
   Mendakapanha मेण्डकपञ्ह

   The dilemmas, where scripture seems to contradict itself, posed so that future monks would have answers. It is the longest book, in many vaggas.

5. 5
   Anumanapanha अनुमानपञ्ह

   Knowing the Buddha by inference, as one knows a city’s builder from the city. Nagasena describes the city of dhamma with its walls, gates, streets and markets.

6. 6
   Dhutangakatha धुतङ्गकथा

   The thirteen ascetic practices, such as eating one meal a day and living at the foot of a tree, and their worth. Nagasena praises them as the training that washes the mind clean.

7. 7
   Opammakathapanha ओपम्मकथापञ्ह

   The qualities a monk should learn from similes: the ass, the cock, the squirrel, the leopard, the lotus, the ocean and many more. The Pali text breaks off partway through its planned list.

Famous verses

‘नागसेनो’ति खो अहं, महाराज, ञायामि… सङ्खा समञ्ञा पञ्ञत्ति वोहारो नाममत्तं यदिदं नागसेनोति, न हेत्थ पुग्गलो उपलब्भती॥

Great king, I am known as Nagasena… but this Nagasena is only a designation, a common name, a concept, a word in use. No person is found here.Milindapanha, Book 2, Pannattipanha (SuttaCentral mil3.1.1)

यथा हि अङ्गसम्भारा, होति सद्दो रथो इति; एवं खन्धेसु सन्तेसु, होति सत्तोति सम्मुति॥

Just as with the assembly of parts there is the word ‘chariot’, so when the aggregates are present there is the convention ‘a being’.Milindapanha, Book 2, Pannattipanha (SuttaCentral mil3.1.1), quoting the nun Vajira, Samyutta Nikaya 5.10

न च सो, न च अञ्ञो॥

Neither the same, nor another.Milindapanha, Book 2, Dhammasantatipanha (SuttaCentral mil3.2.1)