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.