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<p>The Buddhist text <i>Milindapañha</i> (Milinda’s Questions) is a captivating dialogue between King Milinda and the Buddhist sage Nāgasena. In the text, Nāgasena explicates the notion of personhood without reference to the eternal self. However, despite early Buddhists’ rejection of the existence of this metaphysical concept, Nāgasena cannot avoid metaphysics while elucidating the concept of the self. Recent writers have developed a new approach to the Buddhist theory of self, arguing that it should be understood less as a metaphysical claim and more as a description of the nature of experience, particularly meditative experience. In this paper, I argue that this new approach to the problem of the self in early Buddhism has no merit because if we attempt to interpret <i>Milindapañha</i> using this new approach, our interpretation of the text becomes inconsistent.</p>

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Is There No Metaphysics in Milindapañha ?

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月14日

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  • Gyan Prakash

摘要

The Buddhist text Milindapañha (Milinda’s Questions) is a captivating dialogue between King Milinda and the Buddhist sage Nāgasena. In the text, Nāgasena explicates the notion of personhood without reference to the eternal self. However, despite early Buddhists’ rejection of the existence of this metaphysical concept, Nāgasena cannot avoid metaphysics while elucidating the concept of the self. Recent writers have developed a new approach to the Buddhist theory of self, arguing that it should be understood less as a metaphysical claim and more as a description of the nature of experience, particularly meditative experience. In this paper, I argue that this new approach to the problem of the self in early Buddhism has no merit because if we attempt to interpret Milindapañha using this new approach, our interpretation of the text becomes inconsistent.