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Milindapañha

The Milindapañha or “Questions of King Milinda” records a series of discussions on points of Dhamma between the monk Nāgasena and the Greek king known in Pali as Milinda. He is usually identified with Menander I Soter, who ruled an Indo-Greek kingdom from his capital of Sagala around BCE 165–130. While the encounter between Greek and Indian culture is fascinating, the dialogs concern only interpretation of Buddhist ideas, with which the king was evidently very familiar, and does not mention Greek philosophy. The text is lively and dynamic, with the King constantly testing Nāgasena with abstruse questions, to which he responds with ingenious arguments and analogies. The text has a shorter Chinese counterpart in the Nāgasena Bhikṣu Sūtra. The text is not Theravādin in origin, but began among one of the schools in the north-west, perhaps the Sarvāstivādins. Most of the content, however, is not sectarian in nature. The Pali text has been extended over the years, and in addition, portions appear to be missing. It is not universally accepted as canonical; SuttaCentral’s Pali texts, however, stem from the Mahāsaṅgīti edition, which as a Burmese text does include it.