The Milindapañha or Questions of Milinda is the one extant work professedly dealing with any of the Greek monarchs in the Far East; for Milinda, beyond any question, is the king Menander. It exists in a Pali version and, in part, in a Chinese translation of the fourth century A.D. of which two recensions are extant. The Pali work falls into two well-marked divisions; the first comprises pp. 1–89 in Trenckner's edition of the Pali text, being books I–III inclusive; the second and longer part comprises all that follows. It is now generally agreed that Part II is later than Part I and the work of a different hand, and it is also generally agreed that Part I (or perhaps I should say the original of Part I) cannot be placed too long after Menander's death; but I need not quote the datings suggested, for none of those who have professedly dealt with the work have investigated Menander's chronology and have usually put him near the end of the second century b.c. or even in the first century. The Chinese translation includes Part I and a few pages of Part II.

The work is cast in the form of a dialogue between Menander and a Buddhist sage Nāgasena, with an introduction in which Menander, at his capital Sāgala, appears as a great king fond of learned disputations, together with his 500 Yonakas, four of whom play a part in setting the scene for the dialogue proper. In the first part Menander's professed object is not the pursuit of knowledge but a dialectical victory over Nāgasena, though he does not in fact keep his end up very well.

Hermaeus' Greek legend on his own coins, both silver and copper, which were struck in the A!lexandria-Kapisa mint, is always βασιλέως σωτῆρος Ἑρμαίου, ‘Of king Hermaeus, saviour’, and the Kharoshthi legend is the corresponding Maharajasa tradatasa Heramayasa, with the ‘Zeus enthroned’ of Alexandria-Kapisa. The Kadphises coins, which are of inferior style, resembling the debased copies of Hermaeus' money issued after his death, fall into two classes. The first class has: obverse, bust of Hermaeus diademed and Greek legend βασιλέως στηρος συ Ἑρμαίου (often corrupted); reverse, Heracles facing with club and lion's skin, and a Kharoshthi legend signifying ‘Kujula Kadphises, Kushan, yavuga (chief)’. This class has the square omicron but no other square letters. The second class has: obverse, bust of Hermaeus diademed, and a Greek legend, usually mutilated, reading ‘Kujula Kadphises, Kushan’; reverse, the same as the first class. This class, beside the square omicron, has the square sigma and phi which one associates with the coins of Gondophares; as both classes must be near in time, it is clear that the period is getting too late for letter forms to mean much chronologically.

Menander was the most famous of the Yavana kings, and his legend attests the impression he made upon the world about him; and a sketch must now be attempted of the kingdom of the man who for a little while had held Asoka's capital and whose conquests were exalted by a Greek historian even above those of Alexander. The deaths of Demetrius and Apollodotus and the return of Eucratides to Bactria left him master of the position in India, and thenceforth to his death he, the one man who had successfully resisted Eucratides, ruled the whole of the territory still remaining to the Greeks in that country, excluding the Paropamisadae; if he had not the royal title before (p. 167) he must have taken it, presumably by a vote of his army, when Demetrius was killed. The growth of his legend, and the establishment of his coinage in Barygaza, postulate for him a reign of reasonable length; at the same time the fact that his son, Strato I, was too young to rule alone when he died sets a definite limit to that length. He legitimised his rule by marrying Demetrius' daughter Agathocleia; the evidence that she was his queen seems conclusive. If cadets of the house of Euthydemus still survived, they must have accepted his rule as the only security against Eucratides and his line; he never had any civil war—at least in all his vast coinage no coin seems known which has been overstruck by anyone else or upon anyone else's money.

It is not possible to get an accurate chronology for Menander's reign, but one must approximate as nearly as possible.