Source: Mizuno 1959

• Texts: T1670A; 那先比丘經 ; T1670B; 那先比丘經
• Dates: Han-Three Kingdoms

Mizuno compares Pāli and Chinese versions of the Milindapañha, along with citations in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, and parallels in T203. His main aim in so doing is to recontruct the development of this text or family of related texts.

Mizuno surveys external evidence for various named Chinese versions or translations of the Milindapañha (19-23) (meaning the better-known versions, 那先比丘經 T1670A and T1670B, leaving T203 for later consideration). CSZJJ lists three related titles, and treats all as anonymous. These versions, Sengyou reports, were in one, two and four juan; the supposed four-juan version presents a problem, because it is never again seen in later catalogues. Fajing and Yancong only report a single version. LDSBJ reports two versions, one of which it ascribes to Guṇabhadra. Mizuno scornfully describes Fei Changfang's information here as "nonsense" 出鱈目, and clearly regrets the fact that it was aped by such later catalogues as DTNDL. Zhisheng, in KYL, typically treats the problem in some more detail (20); Mizuno concludes from his information that only a two-juan version was actually extant under the Sui-Tang. Turning to the print canons, Mizuno notes that the N. Song and Korean canons proceed as Zhisheng would lead us to expect, and carry versions of the text in two juan. However, from the Southern Song onward, a three-juan version of the text suddenly appears, and is transmitted in the line leading through the Yuan and Ming (the so-called "three editions" 三本 of the Taishō). Nanjio based his account of the text on the Ming. In modern canons, beginning with the Shukusatsu, the two-juan version was reinstated; the Manji and Taishō versions of the canon carry both [in T, this is the T1670A vs. B distinction --- MR].

For Mizuno, this tangled history presents more than one problem. The two-juan version of Zhisheng and the northern line is not necessarily the same as the two-juan version reported by Sengyou. Moreover, no catalogue prior to the print canons reports any three-juan version, so that the three-juan version of the southern line comes out of the blue. The four-juan version of CSZJJ is also a kind of unicorn of textual history, glimpsed once at the dawn of the record, only to vanish without trace. One possible partial solution, Mizuno suggests, may be that the southern line three-juan version represents somehow the survival of a Liang four-juan version (22). Otherwise, Mizuno tends to the conclusion that there was originally only one version, in three juan; the two-juan version emerged through some defect or accident of transmission history, whereby a central part got lost (demonstrated in part through the comparative table discussed immediately below); further, the order of textual components also got jumbled at places in transmission. This means the three-juan version preserves material lost from the two-juan, and it therefore might easily appear more conservative. However, Mizuno notes that the two-juan version is subject to fewer post-translation interpolations, meaning that for parts of the text where it survives, it is more likely to preserve original readings. He also holds that the text is likely to be originally even older than the E. Jin date that it presently bears in the canon (23; he returns to the question of date later).

Mizuno tabulates the two- and three-juan versions against the Pāli, in order to show commonalities, and also differences in content and order (23-28). Perhaps the most striking lesson presented by this table, for the purposes of the textual history of the Chinese, is a large lacuna in the two-juan version (by comparison to the other two versions) (Mizuno's p. 25), equalling about 15 registers of text. He also finds that two substantial sequences of text appear in reverse order in the two versions (26-28). In Section 4 of his paper, however, Mizuno shows that even if we were to adjust for the gap in the two-juan version and the reversal of order, the two Chinese versions would not be identical: even in shared passages, details of wording also differ in numerous loci. Moreover, even the two-juan version, whose readings are more conservative, also preserves interpolated remarks which Mizuno suspects of being due to the translator—for example, an explanation of the six poṣadha days (29-30). Against the two-juan version, the three-juan version contains ample explanatory expansion of lists, etc., e.g. the thirty-seven bodhyaṅgāni (30).

Mizuno argues for a very early translation date for the base text behind T1670A and T1670B--for the original substrate, perhaps as early as the E. Han. He bases this suggestion on what he characterises as archaic translation terminology (for such lists as the eightfold path, the five skandhas, and the twelvefold chain of dependent origination), the translation of verse with prose, and reference to the "Great Qin" 大秦 (for the Greeks), and use of the plural –cao 曹 (31-34).

Mizuno suggests further that the translators of the oldest version worked without the knowledge of other translations, even those of An Shigao. He shows that the translation terminology overlaps very little with An Shigao; on this basis, he characterises the translation idiom of T1670 as archaic and "juvenile/immature" (古く、且つ幼稚なもの, 31) and "even more immature" [than that of An Shigao] (むしろ幼稚でさえある); he also speaks of a period "before Buddhist terminology settled down" (佛教用語が確定する以前, 31); and, through the comparison with An Shigao's terms, suggests that the oldest version of the text belongs to "a period when examples of translation terms" for fundamental Buddhist categories, such as the r̥ddhipāda or the five skandhas, were "completely unknown" (譯名が全くしられていない…その譯例が全く知られていなかった時代のものであることを思わせる, 31).

Against these factors that seem to him to suggest an early date, Mizuno finds it puzzling that T1670 is not mentioned in Dao'an. He proposes that this might indicate that the text was translated in a marginal location, and languished for a period outside the mainstream (33). If this were the case, he argues, it could date as late as the Three Kingdoms, and its idiosyncratic phraseology might indicate that it is a product of the fringes, outside circles where other translations circulated.

On the basis of these complex considerations, Mizuno concludes that "the translation of this scripture must be situated in the Later Han, or at the very latest, not after the Three Kingdoms"( 本経の訳出は...後漢代に置かれるべきであり、おそくとも三国時代を下るものではない). For Mizuno, then, the date of the E. Jin, still carried in the Taishō, is nothing more than "baseless freestyling" 無根拠の杜撰 on the part of Fei Changfang, which was uncritically accepted by subsequent generations (30).

Mizuno also suggests that the jumbled and opaque character of the text might have led it to have little impact, noting, for example, that it is not excerpted in the Jing lü yi xiang (he notes that a couple of passages are excerpted in the Fa yuan zhu lin and the Zhu jing yao ji).

Mizuno surveys the various editions and versions of the Pāli text, and attempts to discern relations between them (34-41). Important for our purposes is his observation that only three of seven sections in the Pāli (§§1-3, excluding §§4-7) are matched in any version in Chinese.

In the Nantuo wang yu Naqiesina gonglun yuan 難陀王與那伽斯那共論緣 of the Za baozang jing 雜寶藏經 T203(111) (ascribed to Jijiaye 吉迦夜 and Tanyao 曇曜), the protagonists are called 難陀王 (*Menander) and 那伽斯那 (Nāgasena). The content focuses on the ability of clever Nāgasena to repeatedly see through ruses set up by the king to test his intelligence. When the two finally lock horns in dialogue, the discourse revolves around the question of whether the ātman is eternal or ineternal, a question which Nāgasena smartly parries by asking the king whether the mangoes of his palace are sweet or sour (there are no such mangoes) (41-42). Few of the details in this story are matched in any other versions of the text. A similar exchange about (non-)self is found in AKBh: the question is whether the faculty of "life" (*jīva) is the same as the body. Nāgasena again resolves this thorny issue with the conceit of the mango. This exchange, and the conceit it is predicated upon, is found in neither Pāli nor Chinese versions of the Milindapañha proper (41-42). Mizuno draws the following conclusions from of this material: multiple versions of the Milindapañha circulated; T203 mentions Kaniṣka and Gandhāra, and so may have been linked to the Northwest; this may imply a link to Sarvāstivāda, and Sarvāstivāda may in turn furnish common ground with AKBh.

Mizuno suggests that material common to Pāli and T1670 is older than whatever version might lie behind T203(111) and AKBh. (Mizuno's reasoning here might be thought somewhat peculiar: he characterises T203 as childish and folksy, contrasting it with the serious, regal tone he finds in Pāli and T1670; i.e. he is assuming that the Milindapañha ultimately records a real exchange, and that the protagonists should have behaved in accordance with their station; 44.) Mizuno states that "most scholars" believe that in broad outlines, §§1-3 of the Pāli, which are shared with Chn. T1670, are older; but he claims that in the Pāli, even those sections have later additions. He believes that at least §§2-3 transmit reports of a real dialogue, but by contrast, that §§4-7 are more scholastic in tone, betraying composition in a later context informed by complex technical learning. He considers the question of where §§4-7 might have been added to the Pāli (47-52). He notes that Pāli commentaries contain only citations from §§1-3 and a little from §4, and on that basis, suggests that those sections (at least) date to before the time of the Sinhalese commentarial tradition behind Buddhaghosa (52-53).

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