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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1since made good by the work of two French scholars. Mons. Sylvain Levi forwarded to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, held in London in the autumn of 1893, a careful study on the subject by M. Edouard Specht, preceded by an introductory essay by himself. It appears from this paper, which excited much interest when it was read, that there are, not one, but two separate and distinct works extant in China under the name of Na-sien Vikkiu Kin, the one inserted in the Korean collec- tion made in that country in 1010 A. D., and the other printed in the collection of Buddhist books published under the Sung in 1239. Neither the date nor the author of either version seems to be known, but Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio states of his work, which is probably one of the two, that it was composed between 317 and 420 A. D.1 The Korean book gives much less of the matter con- tained in our books II and III than the later work in the Sung collection, the former containing only 13,752 characters while the latter has 22,657. In the matter of the order of the questions also the later of the two Chinese books follows much more closely the order found in the present translation than does the work found in the Korean collection. This paper has since been published in the Proceedings of the Congress2, and it gives translations of several episodes on questions in which the Chinese is said to throw light on the Pali. Both M. Specht and M. Sylvain Levi seem to think that the two Chinese books were transla- tions of older recensions of the work than the one preserved in Pali. This argument does not seem to me, as at present advised, at all certain. It by no means follows that a shorter recension, merely because it is shorter, must necessarily be older than a longer one. It is quite as possible that the longer one gave rise to the shorter ones. 1 It would be very interesting to have this point decided ; namely, whether the volume in the India Office Library is identical with either of the two very different books in Paris. If not, we have, then, still another Chinese book on Milinda. 2 Vol. i. pp. 520-529. INTRODUCTION. Xlll The story of a discussion between Nagasena and Milinda is no doubt, if the arguments in the Introduction to Part I are of any avail, an historical romance with an ethical tendency. In constant repetition, after it had become popular, it is precisely those parts which do not appeal so easily to the popular ear (because they deal, not with ordinary puzzles, but with dilemmas or with the higher mysteries of Arahatship), that would be naturally omitted. I do not go so far as to say that it must have been so. But I venture to think that for a critical judgment as to the comparative dates of the three works on the same subject, now known to exist, we must wait till translations of the whole of the two independent Chinese versions are before us. And further that the arguments must then turn on quite other considerations than the very
2And further that the arguments must then turn on quite other considerations than the very ambiguous conclusions to be drawn merely from the length or shortness of the different treatment in each case. It is very much to be hoped therefore that M. Specht will soon give us complete versions of the two Chinese works in question. At present it can only be said that we have a very pretty puzzle propounded to us, a puzzle much more difficult to solve than those which king Milinda put to Nagasena the sage. If the shorter version (or rather paraphrase, for it does not seem to be a version at all in our modern sense) — that from the Korea — be really the original, how comes it that the other Chinese book, included in a collection made two centuries later, should happen to differ from it in the precise parts in which it, the supposed original, differs from the Pali ? Surely the only probable hypothesis would be that of the Chinese books, both working on the same original, the later is more exact than the earlier : and that we simply have here one more instance of an already well-known characteristic of Chinese reproductions of Indian books — namely, that the later version is more accurate than the older one. The later a Chinese 'translation' the better, in the few cases where comparison is possible, it has proved to be (that is, the nearer to our idea of what a translation should be) ; XIV QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES OF MILINDA THE KING. and Tibetan versions are better, as a rule, than the best of the Chinese. Since the publication of this very interesting paper, M. Sylvain LeVi has had the great kindness to send me an advance proof of a more complete paper, to be published in Paris, in which M. Specht and himself have made a detailed analysis of the three versions, setting out over against the English translation of each question (as contained in the first volume of the present work) the translations of it as they appear in each of the Chinese versions. I have not been able by a study of this analysis to add anything to the admirable summary of the conclusions as to the relations of these two books to one another and to the Pali which are given by M. Specht in his article in the Proceed- ings of the Ninth Congress. The later version is through- out much nearer to the Pali ; but neither of the two give more than a small portion of it, the earlier does not seem to go much further than our Volume I, page 99 (just where the Pali has the remark, ' Here end the questions of king Milinda '), and the later, though it goes beyond this point, apparently stops at Volume I, page 114.
3These details are of importance for the decision of the critical question of the history of the Milinda. The book starts with an elaborate and very skilful introduction, giving first an account of the way in which Nagasena and Milinda had met in a previous birth, then the life history, in order, of each of them in this birth, then the account of how they met. Throughout the whole story the attention is constantly directed to the very great ability of the two disputants, and to the fact that they had been specially prepared through their whole existence for this great en- counter, which was to be of the first importance for religion and for the world. This introductory story occupies in my translation thirty-nine pages. Is it likely that so stately an entrance hall should have really been built to lead only into one or two small rooms? — to two chapters occupy- ing only sixty pages more ? Is it not more probable that the original architect had a better sense of proportion? As an Introduction to the book as we have it in these INTRODUCTION. XV volumes the story told in those thirty-nine pages is very much in place ; as an Introduction to the first two chapters only, or to the first two and a portion of the third, it is quite incongruous. And accordingly we find in the very beginning of the Introduction a kind of table of contents in which the shape of the whole book, as we have it here, is foreshadowed in detail, and in due proportion. This will have to be taken into account when, with full translations of the two Chinese books before us, we shall have to con- sider whether they are really copies of the original statue, or whether they are interesting fragments. I ought not to close this reference to the labours of MM. Levi and Specht without calling attention to a slip of the pen in one expression used by M. Sylvain Levi regarding the Milinda1. He says, c La science ne connaissait jusqu'ici de cet ouvrage qu'un texte ecrit en Pali et incorpore dans le canon Singhalais?' Now there is, accurately speaking, no such thing as a Sinhalese canon of the Buddhist Scriptures, any more than there is a French or an English canon of the Christian Scriptures. The canon of the three Pi/akas, settled in the valley of the Ganges (probably at Patna in the time of Asoka),has been adhered to, it is true, in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam. But it cannot properly be called either a Ceylonese or a Burmese or a Siamese canon. In that canon the Milinda was never incorporated. And not only so, but the expression used clearly implies that there is some other canon. Now there has never been any other canon of the Buddhist Scriptures besides this one of the three Pi/akas. Many Buddhist books, not incorporated in the canon, have been composed in different languages — Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Sinhalese, Burmese, Siamese, &c. — but no new canon, in the European meaning of the phrase, has ever been formed.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1since made good by the work of two French scholars. Mons. Sylvain Levi forwarded to the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists, held in London in the autumn of 1893, a careful study on the subject by M. Edouard Specht, preceded by an introductory essay by himself. It appears from this paper, which excited much interest when it was read, that there are, not one, but two separate and distinct works extant in China under the name of Na-sien Vikkiu Kin, the one inserted in the Korean collec- tion made in that country in 1010 A. D., and the other printed in the collection of Buddhist books published under the Sung in 1239. Neither the date nor the author of either version seems to be known, but Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio states of his work, which is probably one of the two, that it was composed between 317 and 420 A. D.1 The Korean book gives much less of the matter con- tained in our books II and III than the later work in the Sung collection, the former containing only 13,752 characters while the latter has 22,657. In the matter of the order of the questions also the later of the two Chinese books follows much more closely the order found in the present translation than does the work found in the Korean collection. This paper has since been published in the Proceedings of the Congress2, and it gives translations of several episodes on questions in which the Chinese is said to throw light on the Pali. Both M. Specht and M. Sylvain Levi seem to think that the two Chinese books were transla- tions of older recensions of the work than the one preserved in Pali. This argument does not seem to me, as at present advised, at all certain. It by no means follows that a shorter recension, merely because it is shorter, must necessarily be older than a longer one. It is quite as possible that the longer one gave rise to the shorter ones. 1 It would be very interesting to have this point decided ; namely, whether the volume in the India Office Library is identical with either of the two very different books in Paris. If not, we have, then, still another Chinese book on Milinda. 2 Vol. i. pp. 520-529. INTRODUCTION. Xlll The story of a discussion between Nagasena and Milinda is no doubt, if the arguments in the Introduction to Part I are of any avail, an historical romance with an ethical tendency. In constant repetition, after it had become popular, it is precisely those parts which do not appeal so easily to the popular ear (because they deal, not with ordinary puzzles, but with dilemmas or with the higher mysteries of Arahatship), that would be naturally omitted. I do not go so far as to say that it must have been so. But I venture to think that for a critical judgment as to the comparative dates of the three works on the same subject, now known to exist, we must wait till translations of the whole of the two independent Chinese versions are before us. And further that the arguments must then turn on quite other considerations than the very
2And further that the arguments must then turn on quite other considerations than the very ambiguous conclusions to be drawn merely from the length or shortness of the different treatment in each case. It is very much to be hoped therefore that M. Specht will soon give us complete versions of the two Chinese works in question. At present it can only be said that we have a very pretty puzzle propounded to us, a puzzle much more difficult to solve than those which king Milinda put to Nagasena the sage. If the shorter version (or rather paraphrase, for it does not seem to be a version at all in our modern sense) — that from the Korea — be really the original, how comes it that the other Chinese book, included in a collection made two centuries later, should happen to differ from it in the precise parts in which it, the supposed original, differs from the Pali ? Surely the only probable hypothesis would be that of the Chinese books, both working on the same original, the later is more exact than the earlier : and that we simply have here one more instance of an already well-known characteristic of Chinese reproductions of Indian books — namely, that the later version is more accurate than the older one. The later a Chinese 'translation' the better, in the few cases where comparison is possible, it has proved to be (that is, the nearer to our idea of what a translation should be) ; XIV QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES OF MILINDA THE KING. and Tibetan versions are better, as a rule, than the best of the Chinese. Since the publication of this very interesting paper, M. Sylvain LeVi has had the great kindness to send me an advance proof of a more complete paper, to be published in Paris, in which M. Specht and himself have made a detailed analysis of the three versions, setting out over against the English translation of each question (as contained in the first volume of the present work) the translations of it as they appear in each of the Chinese versions. I have not been able by a study of this analysis to add anything to the admirable summary of the conclusions as to the relations of these two books to one another and to the Pali which are given by M. Specht in his article in the Proceed- ings of the Ninth Congress. The later version is through- out much nearer to the Pali ; but neither of the two give more than a small portion of it, the earlier does not seem to go much further than our Volume I, page 99 (just where the Pali has the remark, ' Here end the questions of king Milinda '), and the later, though it goes beyond this point, apparently stops at Volume I, page 114.
3These details are of importance for the decision of the critical question of the history of the Milinda. The book starts with an elaborate and very skilful introduction, giving first an account of the way in which Nagasena and Milinda had met in a previous birth, then the life history, in order, of each of them in this birth, then the account of how they met. Throughout the whole story the attention is constantly directed to the very great ability of the two disputants, and to the fact that they had been specially prepared through their whole existence for this great en- counter, which was to be of the first importance for religion and for the world. This introductory story occupies in my translation thirty-nine pages. Is it likely that so stately an entrance hall should have really been built to lead only into one or two small rooms? — to two chapters occupy- ing only sixty pages more ? Is it not more probable that the original architect had a better sense of proportion? As an Introduction to the book as we have it in these INTRODUCTION. XV volumes the story told in those thirty-nine pages is very much in place ; as an Introduction to the first two chapters only, or to the first two and a portion of the third, it is quite incongruous. And accordingly we find in the very beginning of the Introduction a kind of table of contents in which the shape of the whole book, as we have it here, is foreshadowed in detail, and in due proportion. This will have to be taken into account when, with full translations of the two Chinese books before us, we shall have to con- sider whether they are really copies of the original statue, or whether they are interesting fragments. I ought not to close this reference to the labours of MM. Levi and Specht without calling attention to a slip of the pen in one expression used by M. Sylvain Levi regarding the Milinda1. He says, c La science ne connaissait jusqu'ici de cet ouvrage qu'un texte ecrit en Pali et incorpore dans le canon Singhalais?' Now there is, accurately speaking, no such thing as a Sinhalese canon of the Buddhist Scriptures, any more than there is a French or an English canon of the Christian Scriptures. The canon of the three Pi/akas, settled in the valley of the Ganges (probably at Patna in the time of Asoka),has been adhered to, it is true, in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam. But it cannot properly be called either a Ceylonese or a Burmese or a Siamese canon. In that canon the Milinda was never incorporated. And not only so, but the expression used clearly implies that there is some other canon. Now there has never been any other canon of the Buddhist Scriptures besides this one of the three Pi/akas. Many Buddhist books, not incorporated in the canon, have been composed in different languages — Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Sinhalese, Burmese, Siamese, &c. — but no new canon, in the European meaning of the phrase, has ever been formed.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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