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 it at present known) is not extant in any of the homes of the various sects and schools of the Buddhist, 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. For in his note he refers only to Hardy, who is good evidence for Ceylon, but who does not even say that the ‘Milinda’ was known elsewhere.
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