'Milind Panho' is in the form of a dialogue between King Milind and a Buddhist saint. The concerned saint was -

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Nagasena. The Milindapanha ('Questions of Milinda') is a Pali Buddhist text framed as a dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Menander I (Milinda), who ruled c. 2nd century BCE in north-west India, and the Buddhist monk Nagasena. Nagasena answers the king's doubts on Buddhist doctrine — the nature of the self, karma, rebirth and nirvana — so he is the saint of the dialogue.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Nagarjuna was the c. 2nd-century-CE founder of the Madhyamaka ('Middle Way') school of Mahayana Buddhism — a different figure separated from Nagasena by roughly 300 years. He is not the interlocutor of the Milindapanha; this Nagasena-vs-Nagarjuna swap is the classic trap (UPSC 2023 itself set 'Milinda-panha — Nagarjuna' as a wrong pair).  (b) Kumarila Bhatta was a 7th–8th-century Mimamsa (Brahmanical) philosopher who defended Vedic ritualism — not a Buddhist monk and unconnected to the Milindapanha.  (c) Nagabhata refers to the Pratihara rulers (Nagabhata I and II) of early-medieval north India — kings, not Buddhist saints, and unrelated to the text.

Concept: The Milindapanha is among the most important non-canonical works of Pali Buddhist literature. It records the philosophical exchange between Menander I (Milinda), a Greek king of the Indo-Greek kingdom, and the learned Buddhist elder Nagasena. Through the dialogue Nagasena explains core Buddhist ideas — anatta (no permanent self), karma, rebirth and nirvana — and tradition holds that Menander was eventually won over to Buddhism.

State PCS 2023 Q11 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q11 — History PYQ with Answer