The Sacred Books of the East (THE QUESTIONS OF KING MILINDA, PART-I)

The work of which a translation is here for the first time presented to the English reading public, has had a strange and interesting history. Written in Northern India, at or a little after the beginning of the Christian era, and either in Sanskrit itself or in some North Indian Prakrit, it has been entirely lost in the land of its origin and (so far as is at present known) is not extant in any of the homes of the various sects and schools of the Buddhists except only in Ceylon and in those countries which have derived their Buddhism from Ceylon. It is true that General Cunningham says that the name of Milinda is still famous in all Buddhist countries.’ But he is here drawing a very wide conclusion from an isolated fact.