TARN'S HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE MILINDAPANHA BY J. GONDA In an excursus added to his book on the Greeks in Bactria and India 1) W. W. Tarn tr:es to demonstrate that the well-known Buddhistic Pdli work Milindap.ariha ("The Questions of Menander") presupposes the existence of a short Greek text dealing with the same subject. Although his view met with the full approval of Madame Bazin-Foucher 2), it remains, to my mind, questionable. I am not yet convinced that this dialogue of the Bactrian king and the Buddhist sage Nagasena, which other scholars wrongly con- sidered as an intentional counterpart of a Platonic dialogue 3), or, at least, as having been influenced by the works of the great Greek philosopher 4), ha.s been rewritten from a HeHenistic Greek text. Let us consider the arguments adduced by Tarn to prove his thesis. His first argument is the word Yonaka, used by the author of the Pali work for the Bactrian Greeks attendant on their author Menander (Mil. 1; 4 etc.). Except for Mil., part I, this term, Tarn says, seemingly only occurs once again in India, in inscription 19 from the Nasik cave. This is perhaps not quite correct for, according to Malalasekera 5), the Afiguttara Commentary record.s that from the time of Kassapa Buddha the Yonakas went about clad in white 1) W. W. T'arn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, Cambridge 1938, p. 414-436. 2) E. Bazin-Foucher, Journal asiatique 230 (1938), p. 507: "le magnifique Excursus (sur) le Milindapanha et le Pseudo-Aristee, ou Tarn a renouvele, en 1'eclairant d'un jour inattendu, la question du fameux dialogue bouddhi- que". 3) A. Weber, Sitzungsberichte Berlin 1890, p. 927. 4) See M. Winternitz, Geschichte der Indischen Litteratur, II, p. 141. 5) G. P. Malalasekera, Dictionary of Pfli Proper Names, 11, London 1938, p. 699. The texts quoted are Manorathapurani (Afiguttara Comm. 1, 51) and Papanca Sudani (Majjhima Comm. II, 575). 45 robes; my assistant, however, who has read through the whole first volume of this commentary has not found this text. And I was not able to verify another passage quoted by the same author: "Yonaka statues, holdings lamps, were used by the Sakyans", because the text (Papanca Sudani) is missing in the Dutch libraries. Of course, the usual San.skrit word for a Greek is Yav.ana, which is the Greek 'I6Fmv and certainly came to India through the Near East and Achaemenid Persia; it is also found in western Asiatic languages. And the Pali and Prakrit word, to be found e.g. in the inscriptions of Asoka, is Yona. "I have never seen its relation to Yavana discu.ssed", Tarn says, "so it is probably unknown; the obvious supposition is that Yona ... was derived directly from "Iauv, for no similar Persian word has been cited and the third century is l,ate for a borrowing from Persia" 6). But apart from the question whether in the .second century B.C. the Greeks in Asia should have called themselves the development of ava to o is quite usual in Prakrit and Pali: avatara->odara-, avadhi->odhl- 7). Moreover, the Old Persian form Yauna must soon have changed to Yona, because in the younger pronunciation and in Middle Iranian au became o s). The classical Greek authors already had rroj3Q'tJaç « Gaubruva) etc. Yonaka implies, Tarn argues, a form 'I(ova%6g, unknown to classical Greek; so the author of the first part of the Pali Milindapanha mu.st, he says, have found this term in the current Hellenistic Greek of the Farther E.ast: Ptolemy 6, 4, 2 mentions a 'Iwvaxa x6kig "Greek Town". Now, Tarn has over- looked the fact that the element -xo- or -axo-, in contradistinction to -vxo- is not used in the Greek language to form ethnica 9). In Indian and Iranian languages -ka- is, on the other hand, frequently found in names of peoples. In Old Persian the KdeeG are called 6) Tarn, o.c., p. 417. 7) See R. Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, Strassburg 1900, § 154; W. Geiger, Pdli, Strassburg 1916, Gramm. § 26, 2. 8) See C. Salemann, in Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, I, 1, Strass- burg 1895-1901, p. 270 and A. Meillet-E. Benveniste, Grammaire du Vieux- Perse2, 1931, p. 58. 9) As to -iaxo-: Kogw01ax6g "Corinthian" beside KoeivAvosfrom KÓQLV60' see E. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik, I, 1939, p. 497 and A. Debrunner, Griechische Wortbildungslehre, Heidelberg 1917, § 394. .