The Chariot That Was Not There

A Greek king asked a Buddhist monk what his name was, and the monk said he did not have one.

That is how the argument starts, and it is the best opening in Indian philosophy.

King Milinda was real. He was Menander, an Indo-Greek king who ruled in the Punjab in the second century before Christ, a descendant of the Greeks who had come with Alexander and stayed, ruling an Indian kingdom from Sagala, which is Sialkot.

He was, by the account, learned and argumentative and had beaten every teacher in his kingdom.

And Nagasena was a monk about whom nothing else at all is known.

The chariot

The king asks his name, and Nagasena says he is called Nagasena, but that no person is found in it, it is only a designation, a way of talking.

And the king is having none of it. He says: if there is no Nagasena, then who is it that wears the robes and eats the food and keeps the precepts? And if there is nobody there, then when somebody kills a monk there is no murder, and no one has ever done anything.