The Milinda-Questions by Mrs Rhys Davids

Author:Mrs Rhys Davids [Davids, Rhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136377761
Google: vaz5AQAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-05T00:55:35+00:00

PART II

MĀṆAVA’S OWN COMPOSITIONS

A. THE DILEMMAS

I HAVE said that in one and the same man, but I see both the editor of the Recorded Conversations, and the composer of the Dilemmas and subsequent chapters. And I have said why I think thus.

I have also suggested, why he started out as original author, with a sequel to the form of what he edited, but a sequel developed as to that form. Converse between two men both cultured, yet so diverse in culture as were king and monk, was of necessity scrappy, fragmentary, unthreshed out, unfinished, a matter not so much of debate on ground familiar to both as of a demand for information and a supply to the same. But when Māṇava sat down, not to edit but to compose, he was free to improve on his edited work. He was not free before. Had he been so, we should surely not have had the abrupt way with which Milinda now and then repeats questions from former talks without getting further than before in the subject.

To present king and monk having a “ real live ” debate on that first subject of the “ knowability ” of the very man, with the monk set to answer all those questions poured out by the king, which he had on that former occasion so “ evaded ”—shall we say prudently, or cravenly ?—would have been of profound interest. For if not so wholly evaded in the Kathāvatthu, they are there also, rather got past than honestly met. And in any case, a cultured and less fettered view from a man two centuries later in time would have furnished more positive historical material than Nāgasena’s recurring non possumus. But I repeat, my conclusion is that the subject of anatta, (or the man as not intuitively known) did not appeal to Māṇava. Brahman as I guess by birth, and only having a good overlay of Sakyan, i.e. Buddhist tuition, he preferred wisely enough to write on subjects in that tuition which had chiefly appealed to him. Let us sum up the Dilemmas to find these.

In the first place I found that, of the 419 pages of the text, nearly one-quarter (100) contain allusions to arahan and arahantship. Deducting 90 as not by Mānava, we may roughly correct the proportion in the residuum to one-fifth. Again, of the 82 sections of the Dilemmas, whereas 5only have the arahan as central topic, just one-half have either the Buddha alone as central topic, or the Buddha in relation to some person or some other subject. Hence, with a large store of subjects, as is evinced by the residual 36,there cannot well be any doubt as to the absorbing appeal constituted, when he was writing the Dilemmas, by the idea of this wonderful man and his wonderful past as so-called Bodhisattva, in Mānava’s mind.

There is nothing very strange about that. The honour and reverence paid him by the Sakya-world, monk and lay, had grown great between the day of his passing away and the day when the “ lañchakas ” of Vinaya and Suttas came to be written.

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