One of the most important books for the study of the Dark Period is the so-called "Questions of King Milinda," of which there is an English version by Professor Rhys Davids in the "Sacred Books of the East." Menander (for that is the proper reading of Milinda) was one of the Greek princes that ruled in India during the last century before Christ. The book fixes its own date, for it alludes to S'akyamuni's prophecy that his religion would not last for more than 500 years after his death, and yet betrays no consciousness of the fact that it had already lasted beyond that period. We may take it, therefore, that the five centuries had not quite elapsed when the book was written, and may place the composition of it somewhere about the time "of the Flavian Emperors of Rome."

The book has been called the "Irenaeus" of Buddhism. The Pali Pitakas are "immanent" in its pages, just "as the New Testament is immanent in the pages of Irenaeus." It bears a strong testimony to the existence and nature of the Hinayana books, as also to the Hinayana doctrine, and, better than any other book, enables us to see what was the state of Buddhist thought at the end of its first period, when the Age of the Upright Law (as it has since been called) was all but over, and the Age of Image Law was about to be introduced.

The author of the book speaks of the period of Five Hundred years as being the duration of S'akyamuni's teachings in the world. The Five Centuries were just elapsing, when the new faith of Christ came into the

From this it would seem that the Mahasanghika (Great Minster) School of the Hinayana has continued itself in Ceylon.