The Questions of King Milinda

A Pāli text presenting conversations between King Milinda, usually identified with the Indo-Greek king Menander I, who ruled in north-western India in the second century BCE, and the Buddhist monk Nāgasena. The king is a skilled debater, and his objections are used to explain Buddhist doctrine through vivid analogies. In the most famous exchange, Nāgasena says his name is only a conventional designation and compares himself to a chariot, which is neither its pole, axle, wheels nor body, nor something apart from them. Other questions ask whether the one reborn is the same as or different from the one who died (neither, like the flame of a lamp burning through the night), how rebirth occurs without a self passing over, how karma works, and why the Buddha's sayings seem to contradict one another. The early core is old; later books were added over time.

It is the classic statement of the Buddhist no-self view as a reply to a sceptical outsider, and the chariot argument is still the standard starting point for treating persons as conventional constructions.