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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Both these references are entirely legendary. In order to magnify the importance of the great festival held in Ceylon on the occasion referred to, it is related that certain famous members of the Buddhist order came, attended by many followers, through the sky, to take part in the ceremony. A comparison of this list with the previous list, also given in the Mahavawsa 1, of the missionaries sent out nearly a hundred years before, by Asoka, will show that the names in the second list are in great part an echo of those in the first. But in selecting well-known names, Mahanama in his second, fabulous, list has, according to the published text, also included that of the Vattaniya Hermitage, and, according to the new verse in the other text, has associated with that place the name of Assagutta, not found elsewhere except in the Milinda. In that book the residence of Assagutta is not specified — it is his friend Roha^a who lives at the Vattaniya, and the locality of the Vattaniya is not specified — it would seem from the state- ment at I, 25 (part i, p. 20 of this translation) that it was a day's journey from ' the Guarded Slope,' that is, in the Himalayas. But geographical allusions are apt to be misleading when the talk is of Bhikshus who could fly through the air. And it seems the most probable explana- tion that the authors of these verses, in adopting these names, had the Milinda story in their mind. [Tumour's reading of the name as Uttara, and not Assagutta, is confirmed by the Dipava;/zsa, chap. XIX, verses 4-6, where all the fourteen names of the visitors from India are given (without any details as to the districts whence they came), and the corresponding name is also Uttara there.] 1 Tumour, pp. 71-73. b2 XX QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES OF MILINDA THE KING. The above sets out all the new information I have been able to glean about the Milinda since the publication of the Introduction to the first volume of this translation. I had hoped in this Introduction to discuss the doctrines, as apart from the historical and geographical allusions, of our author — comparing his standpoint with that of the earliest Buddhists, set out in the four great Nikayas, with that of later books contained in the Pi/akas, and with that of still later works not included in the canon at all. I have to express my regret that a long and serious illness, cul- minating in a serious accident that was very nearly a fatal one, has deprived me altogether of the power of work, and not only prevented me from carrying out this perhaps too ambitious design, but has so long delayed the writing of this Introduction.
2Only one of the preliminary labours to the intended Introduction was completed. I read through the Katha Vatthu, which has not yet been edited, with a view of ascertaining whether, at the time when that book was written, that is, in the time of Asoka, the kind of questions agitating the Buddhist community bore any relation to the kind of questions discussed by the author of our Milinda. As is well known, the Katha Vatthu sets out a number of points on which the orthodox school, that of the Thera- vadins, differed in Asoka's time from the other seventeen schools (afterwards called collectively the Hinayana) which had sprung up among the Buddhists between the time of the Buddha and that of Asoka. I published in the ' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society' for 1892 a statement, both in the original Pali and in English, of all the points thus discussed by the author of the Katha Vatthu, Moggali- putta TissaThera, giving (from the commentary) the names of the various schools against whom, in each instance, his remarks were directed. It is now possible to judge from this analysis of the questions proposed, what were the subjects on which differences obtained among the early Buddhists. There are a number of points raised in Tissa's discussions which are also discussed by the author of the Milinda. In every INTRODUCTION. XXI instance the two authors agree in their views, Nagasena in the Milinda always advocating the opinion which Tissa puts forward as that of the Thera-vadins. This is especially the case with those points which Moggali-putta Tissa thinks of so much importance that he discusses them at much greater length than the others. His first chapter, for instance, by far the longest in his book, is on the question whether, in the high and truest sense of the word, there can be said to be a * soul ' l. It is precisely this question which forms also the subject of the very first discussion between Milinda and Nagasena, the conversation leading up to the celebrated simile of the chariot by which N&gasena apparently convinces Milinda of the truth of the orthodox Buddhist view that there is really no such thing as a 'soul' in the ordinary sense2. On leaving the sage, the king returns to his palace, and the next day the officer who escorts Nagasena there to renew the discussion, occupies the time to raise again the same question, and is answered by the simile of the musicians3. Not content with these two expositions of this important doctrine, the author of the Milinda returns again soon afterwards to the same point, which he illustrates by the simile of the palace 4, and further on in the book he takes occasion to discuss and refute the commonly held opinion that there is a soul in inanimate things, such as water 5.
3It cannot be doubted that the authors of the Katha Vatthu and the Milinda were perfectly justified in putting this crucial question in the very forefront of their discussion — just as the Buddha himself, as is well known, made it the subject of the very first discourse he addressed to his earliest converted followers, the Anatta-lakkha/za Sutta, included both in the Vinaya and in the Anguttara Nikaya 6. The history of ideas about the ' soul ' has yet to be 1 Katha Vatthu I, i. 2 Milinda, i, pp. 40-41. 3 Milinda, i, p. 48. 4 Milinda, i, pp. 86-89. 5 Milinda, ii, pp. 85-87. e Vinaya Texts (S. B. E. XIII), part i, pp. 100, 101, and Anguttara Nikaya. XXU QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES OF MILINDA THE KING. written. But the outlines of it are pretty well established, and there is nothing to show that the Indian notions on the subject, apart perhaps from the subsidiary beliefs in Karma and transmigration, were materially different from those obtaining elsewhere. Already in prehistoric times the ancestors of the Indian peoples, whether Aryan by race or not, had come to believe, probably through the influence of dreams, in the existence inside each man of a subtle image of the man himself. This weird and intangible form left the body during sleep, and at death it continued in some way to live. It was a crude hypothesis found useful to explain the phenomena of dreams, of motion, and of life. And it was applied very indiscriminately to the allied phenomena in external things — the apparent life and motion, not only of animals, but also of plants and rivers, of winds and celestial bodies, being explained by the hypothesis of a soul within them. The varying conditions and appearances of the external world gave rise to the various powers and qualities ascribed to these external souls, and hence to whole systems of polytheism and mythology. And just as the gods, which never had any existence except in the ideas of their worshippers, were born and grew and changed and passed away with those ideas, so also the hypothesis of internal souls had, no less in India than elsewhere, a continual change, a continual development— and this not only as to ideas on the nature and origin of the internal human souls, but as to their relation to the external souls or gods. And when specula- tion, which loved to busy itself with these mysterious and fanciful hypotheses, had learnt to conjecture a unity behind the variety of external spirits, the relation of men's souls to the one great first cause, to God, became the subject of endless discussions, of varying views invented to harmonise with varying preconceived conceptions. When Buddhism arose these hypotheses as to ' souls,' internal and external, formed the basis of all the widely differing, and very living and earnest, religious and philo- sophical speculations in the valley of the Ganges, where there then obtained that marvellous freedom of thought INTRODUCTION. XX111
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.
1Both these references are entirely legendary. In order to magnify the importance of the great festival held in Ceylon on the occasion referred to, it is related that certain famous members of the Buddhist order came, attended by many followers, through the sky, to take part in the ceremony. A comparison of this list with the previous list, also given in the Mahavawsa 1, of the missionaries sent out nearly a hundred years before, by Asoka, will show that the names in the second list are in great part an echo of those in the first. But in selecting well-known names, Mahanama in his second, fabulous, list has, according to the published text, also included that of the Vattaniya Hermitage, and, according to the new verse in the other text, has associated with that place the name of Assagutta, not found elsewhere except in the Milinda. In that book the residence of Assagutta is not specified — it is his friend Roha^a who lives at the Vattaniya, and the locality of the Vattaniya is not specified — it would seem from the state- ment at I, 25 (part i, p. 20 of this translation) that it was a day's journey from ' the Guarded Slope,' that is, in the Himalayas. But geographical allusions are apt to be misleading when the talk is of Bhikshus who could fly through the air. And it seems the most probable explana- tion that the authors of these verses, in adopting these names, had the Milinda story in their mind. [Tumour's reading of the name as Uttara, and not Assagutta, is confirmed by the Dipava;/zsa, chap. XIX, verses 4-6, where all the fourteen names of the visitors from India are given (without any details as to the districts whence they came), and the corresponding name is also Uttara there.] 1 Tumour, pp. 71-73. b2 XX QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES OF MILINDA THE KING. The above sets out all the new information I have been able to glean about the Milinda since the publication of the Introduction to the first volume of this translation. I had hoped in this Introduction to discuss the doctrines, as apart from the historical and geographical allusions, of our author — comparing his standpoint with that of the earliest Buddhists, set out in the four great Nikayas, with that of later books contained in the Pi/akas, and with that of still later works not included in the canon at all. I have to express my regret that a long and serious illness, cul- minating in a serious accident that was very nearly a fatal one, has deprived me altogether of the power of work, and not only prevented me from carrying out this perhaps too ambitious design, but has so long delayed the writing of this Introduction.
2Only one of the preliminary labours to the intended Introduction was completed. I read through the Katha Vatthu, which has not yet been edited, with a view of ascertaining whether, at the time when that book was written, that is, in the time of Asoka, the kind of questions agitating the Buddhist community bore any relation to the kind of questions discussed by the author of our Milinda. As is well known, the Katha Vatthu sets out a number of points on which the orthodox school, that of the Thera- vadins, differed in Asoka's time from the other seventeen schools (afterwards called collectively the Hinayana) which had sprung up among the Buddhists between the time of the Buddha and that of Asoka. I published in the ' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society' for 1892 a statement, both in the original Pali and in English, of all the points thus discussed by the author of the Katha Vatthu, Moggali- putta TissaThera, giving (from the commentary) the names of the various schools against whom, in each instance, his remarks were directed. It is now possible to judge from this analysis of the questions proposed, what were the subjects on which differences obtained among the early Buddhists. There are a number of points raised in Tissa's discussions which are also discussed by the author of the Milinda. In every INTRODUCTION. XXI instance the two authors agree in their views, Nagasena in the Milinda always advocating the opinion which Tissa puts forward as that of the Thera-vadins. This is especially the case with those points which Moggali-putta Tissa thinks of so much importance that he discusses them at much greater length than the others. His first chapter, for instance, by far the longest in his book, is on the question whether, in the high and truest sense of the word, there can be said to be a * soul ' l. It is precisely this question which forms also the subject of the very first discussion between Milinda and Nagasena, the conversation leading up to the celebrated simile of the chariot by which N&gasena apparently convinces Milinda of the truth of the orthodox Buddhist view that there is really no such thing as a 'soul' in the ordinary sense2. On leaving the sage, the king returns to his palace, and the next day the officer who escorts Nagasena there to renew the discussion, occupies the time to raise again the same question, and is answered by the simile of the musicians3. Not content with these two expositions of this important doctrine, the author of the Milinda returns again soon afterwards to the same point, which he illustrates by the simile of the palace 4, and further on in the book he takes occasion to discuss and refute the commonly held opinion that there is a soul in inanimate things, such as water 5.
3It cannot be doubted that the authors of the Katha Vatthu and the Milinda were perfectly justified in putting this crucial question in the very forefront of their discussion — just as the Buddha himself, as is well known, made it the subject of the very first discourse he addressed to his earliest converted followers, the Anatta-lakkha/za Sutta, included both in the Vinaya and in the Anguttara Nikaya 6. The history of ideas about the ' soul ' has yet to be 1 Katha Vatthu I, i. 2 Milinda, i, pp. 40-41. 3 Milinda, i, p. 48. 4 Milinda, i, pp. 86-89. 5 Milinda, ii, pp. 85-87. e Vinaya Texts (S. B. E. XIII), part i, pp. 100, 101, and Anguttara Nikaya. XXU QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES OF MILINDA THE KING. written. But the outlines of it are pretty well established, and there is nothing to show that the Indian notions on the subject, apart perhaps from the subsidiary beliefs in Karma and transmigration, were materially different from those obtaining elsewhere. Already in prehistoric times the ancestors of the Indian peoples, whether Aryan by race or not, had come to believe, probably through the influence of dreams, in the existence inside each man of a subtle image of the man himself. This weird and intangible form left the body during sleep, and at death it continued in some way to live. It was a crude hypothesis found useful to explain the phenomena of dreams, of motion, and of life. And it was applied very indiscriminately to the allied phenomena in external things — the apparent life and motion, not only of animals, but also of plants and rivers, of winds and celestial bodies, being explained by the hypothesis of a soul within them. The varying conditions and appearances of the external world gave rise to the various powers and qualities ascribed to these external souls, and hence to whole systems of polytheism and mythology. And just as the gods, which never had any existence except in the ideas of their worshippers, were born and grew and changed and passed away with those ideas, so also the hypothesis of internal souls had, no less in India than elsewhere, a continual change, a continual development— and this not only as to ideas on the nature and origin of the internal human souls, but as to their relation to the external souls or gods. And when specula- tion, which loved to busy itself with these mysterious and fanciful hypotheses, had learnt to conjecture a unity behind the variety of external spirits, the relation of men's souls to the one great first cause, to God, became the subject of endless discussions, of varying views invented to harmonise with varying preconceived conceptions. When Buddhism arose these hypotheses as to ' souls,' internal and external, formed the basis of all the widely differing, and very living and earnest, religious and philo- sophical speculations in the valley of the Ganges, where there then obtained that marvellous freedom of thought INTRODUCTION. XX111
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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