516 



SCIENCES AND SOCIAL ARTS. 



[PART IV. 



structure and contents these bear a striking resemblance 

 to the Jewish Talmud, combining, with aphorisms and 

 maxims, philological explanations of the divine text, 

 stories illustrative of its doctrines, into which not only 

 saints and heroes, but also animals and inanimate ob- 

 jects, are introduced, and not a few of the fables that 

 pass as uEsop's are to be found in the Jatakas of Ceylon. 

 There are translations into Singhalese of the greater part 

 of its contents, and so attractive are its narratives that the 

 natives will listen the livelong night to recitations from 

 its pages. 1 



The other Pah works 2 embrace subjects in connection 

 with cosmography and the Buddhist theories of the uni- 

 verse ; the distinctions of caste, topographical narratives, 

 a few disquisitions on medicine, and books which, like 

 the Milindaprasna, or " Questions of Milinda" 3 without 

 being canonical give an orthodox summary of the national 

 religion. 



But the chefs-d'oeuvre of Pah literature are their chro- 

 nicles, the Dipawanso, Mahawanso, and others ; of which 

 the most important by far is the Mahawanso and its 

 tikas or commentaries. It stands at the head of the 

 historical literature of the East ; unrivalled by any- 

 thing extant in Hindustan 4 , the wildness of whose chro- 



1 HARDY'S Buddhism, ch. v. p. 98. 



2 A lucid account of the principal 

 Pali works in connection with reli- 

 gion will be found in the Appendix 

 to HARDY'S Manual of Buddhism, 

 p. 509, and in HARDY'S Eastern 

 Monachism, pp. 27, 315. 



3 The title of this popular work 

 has given rise to a very curious con- 

 jecture of Tumour's. It professes to 

 contain the dialectic controversies of 

 Naga-sena, through whose instru- 

 mentality Buddhism was introduced 

 into Kashmir, with Milinda, who was 

 the Raja of an adjoining country, 

 called Sagala, near the junction of 

 the rivers Ravi and Chenab. These 

 discussions must have taken place 

 about the year B.C. 43. Now Sagala 

 is identical with Sangala, the people 



of which, according to Arrian, made 

 a bold resistance to the advance of 

 Alexander the Great beyond the 

 Hydraotes ; and it has been sup- 

 posed by Sir Alexander Burnes to 

 have occupied the site of Lahore. 

 Its sovereign, therefore, who em- 

 braced the doctrines of Buddha, was 

 probably an Asiatic Greek, and TUR- 

 NOUR suggests that the " Yons " or 

 " Yonicas " who, according to the 

 Milinda-prasna, formed his body- 

 guard, were either Greeks or the 

 descendants of Greeks from Ionia. 

 Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng., v. 523 ; 

 HARDY'S Manual of Buddhism, p. 

 512 ; RETNATJD, Memoire stir FInde, 

 p. 65. 



4 LASSEN, Indis. Alt., vol. ii. p. 13 

 15. 



