The Milindapanha: The Questions of King Milinda

By Tim Yu · Updated 2026-08-27

The Milindapanha (“Questions of Milinda”) is a revered Pali Buddhist text: a dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Menander (Pali: Milinda) and the learned monk Nagasena. Famous above all for the chariot analogy for not-self, it is a landmark of Buddhist philosophical argument — and a rare literary meeting of Greek and Buddhist worlds. It holds an unusual, in-between place in Buddhist scripture.

The short answer

The Milindapanha stages one of the great conversations in Buddhist literature. On one side sits King Milinda — the historical Greek king Menander, who ruled in the northwest of India in the 2nd century BCE — a sharp and sceptical questioner. On the other sits Nagasena, a monk of profound learning. The king presses hard questions and apparent contradictions about the Buddha’s teaching; Nagasena answers each with reasoning and, above all, with memorable similes. The result is both a clear introduction to Buddhist thought and a genuine philosophical dialogue in the classical manner. Its most celebrated moment — the analysis of a chariot to demonstrate that there is no fixed “self” — has become one of the most-taught illustrations in all of Buddhism. (Unfamiliar terms are in the glossary.)

The king and the monk

The Milindapanha is unusual for being anchored to a real historical figure. King Milinda is Menander I, the most famous of the Indo-Greek kings who ruled the Bactrian and northwest-Indian regions in the centuries after Alexander the Great’s conquests. He reigned in the 2nd century BCE, and he is the only one of those Greek kings whom Indian tradition remembers by name — a sign of the impression he left.

The text presents him as a brilliant, restless mind who has bested every teacher he has questioned, until he meets Nagasena, who is more than his match. That such a book exists at all is a small marvel of history: a record, however stylised, of the meeting of Greek and Buddhist civilisations in the wake of Alexander — one of the most fascinating cultural contacts of the ancient world, part of the long story of how Buddhism spread.

The chariot: the argument for not-self

The Milindapanha’s most famous passage comes near the very start, and it dramatises the Buddhist teaching of not-self (anatta) with a simplicity that has never been improved on.

When the king addresses the monk as “Nagasena,” Nagasena replies that “Nagasena” is merely a name, a convenient designation — there is no fixed, independent “Nagasena” to be found. The king objects: then who is it that wears the robes and eats the food? So Nagasena asks the king about his chariot. Is the chariot the wheels? No. The axle? The pole? The frame? None of these, taken alone, is the chariot. Is the chariot something other than all its parts? No. So where is “the chariot”? It turns out that “chariot” is simply a word — a useful label for a particular assembly of parts working together, with no separate chariot-essence hiding among them.

And so, Nagasena concludes, it is with a person. “Nagasena,” “the self,” “I” — these are conventional designations for an ever-changing bundle of physical and mental parts, with no permanent, independent self to be discovered behind them. It is a perfect small lesson in what Buddhism means by not-self, and in the difference between conventional truth (there is, of course, a Nagasena to talk to) and ultimate truth (no fixed self can be found).

An unusual place in the canon

Here precision matters, because the Milindapanha’s status is genuinely mixed. It is best described as para-canonical — a text of the highest respect that different Theravada traditions place differently:

• In the Burmese tradition, it is treated as canonical, included among the books of the Khuddaka Nikaya.
• In the Sri Lankan and Thai traditions, it is not part of the canon proper, though it is deeply revered as an authoritative non-canonical work.

So it would be wrong to call it simply “canonical” or simply “non-canonical.” It sits in a respected borderland — cherished everywhere, formally canonised only in some places.

Its date is likewise uncertain. Scholars think the core of the text (roughly its earlier portion, which has a parallel preserved in Chinese) may date to around the 1st century BCE, with substantial later additions made over the following centuries, much of it in Sri Lanka. So the historical king Menander belongs firmly to the 2nd century BCE, while the book about him grew up considerably later — the two should not be run together.

Why it matters

The Milindapanha matters for two reasons. As philosophy, it is one of the clearest and most engaging expositions of core Buddhist ideas — the chariot analogy alone has taught not-self to countless generations. As history, it is a precious trace of the encounter between the Greek and Buddhist worlds, a conversation across cultures preserved in scripture. Few texts are at once so useful to a beginner and so intriguing to a historian.

For the teaching at its heart, see not-self; for the canon it sits beside, the Pali Canon; for the world that produced it, how Buddhism spread; and for the wider library, Buddhist scriptures.