Homage to the Bhagavan, the Enlightened One, the Perfectly Awakened Buddha.
A king named Milinda approached Nagasena in that
best of cities, Sagala, much as the Ganga draws
near the ocean.
The king advanced and put to that brilliant orator, a
torchbearer dispelling darkness, numerous subtle
questions on possibilities and impossibilities.
The marvellous questions and answers pertain to
matters of profound significance, as they stir the
heart, please the ear, and send shivers down the spine.
The brilliant talk of Nagasena, with its analogies
and methods, penetrated the heart of the
abhidhamma and the vinaya, and unravelled the net of suttas.
So seek knowledge here and cheer the mind
as you listen to these subtle questions that resolve all
points of uncertainty.
This is the account that has been handed down by tradition. The city called Sagala was a centre of trade for the Yonakas, part of a lovely region of earth, resplendent with rivers and mountains and abounding in parks, gardens, woods, lakes, and lotus pools. It was a city founded by learned people and delightful for its rivers, hills, and woods. Its enemies vanquished, it was free of oppression by adversaries. It boasted diverse and formidable watchtowers and gates, excellent and noble arches mounted over the city portals, and encircling white walls and deep moats around the palace.
Its streets, squares, and intersections were well planned, and the interiors of its shops were stocked with many varieties of fine goods exquisitely displayed. It was graced with hundreds of diverse alms halls and embellished with hundreds of thousands of fine houses resembling Himalayan peaks.
The city teemed with elephants, horses, chariots, and infantry. It was crowded with the multitudes of humanity, including throngs of handsome men and women and numerous Kshatriyas, Brahmans, Vaishyas, and Shudras. It resounded with cries of welcome to various renouncers and Brahmans and became the resort of many types of educated and heroic men. Fragrant with scents, the city’s bazaars were packed with stores of various cloths, including Kasi and Kotumbara textiles, and emporia displaying numerous exquisite flowers and perfumes. Its shops were arrayed in all directions and boasted many prized jewels. The city was the home of glittering treasure, full of merchant guilds trading in finery, bursting with copper, silver, gold, bronze, and stoneware, a place of lavish riches, good fortune, and luxury. Its treasuries and granaries were stuffed; there was plentiful food and drink of choice fare, cuisines, sauces, beverages, and savouries, and crops so successful that the city resembled Uttarakuru and the heavenly city Alakamanda.
The setting thus established, the previous deeds of Milinda and Nagasena should be described, in addition to relating their conversation, divided into six thusly: “Former Connections,” “Questions of Milinda,” “Questions on Defining Characteristics,” “Ram Horn Dilemmas,” “A Question Resolved by Inference,” and “Questions and Discussions of Analogies.”
And within that, the “Questions of Milinda” has two parts: “Questions on Defining Characteristics” and “Questions for Resolving Doubt.” And further, “Ram Horn Dilemmas” is twofold: the “Great Chapter” and “Questions and Discussions About Yogis.”
This section, on former connections, deals with past karma. A long time ago during the dispensation of the Bhagavan Kassapa,* there lived a large community of monks in a single residence near the Ganga. There the monks completed the observances and the moral discipline, and they rose early, took up their brooms, and swept up the place by brushing the rubbish into a heap, all the while contemplating the Buddha’s qualities. Once a monk told a novice, “Come here, novice, and throw out this rubbish,” but the novice went on his way, not listening. And this happened a second time and a third in which, though addressed, he did not listen and just carried on. So the monk got angry, thinking the novice incorrigible, and gave him a blow with a broomstick.
At this the novice cried out with fear and threw out the rubbish, while making his first aspiration: “By this meritorious karma of throwing out the rubbish, may I in birth after birth until I attain nibbana always be born splendid and powerful like the noonday sun!”
Then, having thrown out the rubbish, he went to the bank of the Ganga to bathe and saw the tossing waves roaring in the Ganga. At this he made a second aspiration: “May I in birth after birth until I attain nibbana always have a ready wit and unfailing speech like these tossing waves!”
Meanwhile, the monk had put away the broom in the broom closet and gone to the bank of the Ganga to bathe as well. He overheard the novice’s aspiration and thought, If he can aspire to this just by doing something I forced him to do, then how might I succeed? So he too made an aspiration: “May I too in birth after birth until I attain nibbana always have unfailing speech like these tossing waves of the Ganga, and may I be able either to provide answers or unravel questions in whatever ways they are asked by him!”
They both then spent an entire era between buddhas being reborn among gods and humans. And then our Bhagavan recognised them, much as he had recognised the elder Tissa, son of Moggali, and he made a prediction: “These two will be reborn five hundred years after my final nibbana, and they will provide analyses of the Dhamma and the vinaya, which I have taught but made subtle, disentangling them and making them clear by asking questions and applying analogies.”
Excerpted with permission from The Questions of Milinda, translated from the Pali by Maria Heim, the Murty Classics Library series, Harvard University Press.
