The Milinda has been edited in Pali by V. Trenckner, and translated
into English by the present writer, with introductions in which
the historical and critical points made in this article are discussed
in detail. There is space here to mention only one further fact.
M. Sylvain Lévy, working in collaboration with M. Specht, has
shown that there are two, if not three, Chinese works, written
between the 5th and 7th centuries, on the Questions of Milinda.
They purport to be translations of Indian works. They are not,
however, translations of the Pali text. They give, with alterations
and additions, the substance of the earlier part of the Pali work;
and are probably derived from a recension that may be older than
the Pali.
Authorities.—V. Trenckner, Milinda-pañho (London, 1880); Rhys Davids, Questions of King Milinda (2 vols., Oxford, 1890–1894); R. Garbe, Beiträge zur indischen Kulturgeschichte (Berlin, 1903, ch. 3, Der Milinda-pañha); Milinda Prashṇaya, in Sinhalese, (Colombo, 1877); R. Morris, in the Academy (Jan. 11, 1881); Sylvain Lévy, Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Orientalists (London, 1892), i. 518–529, and Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1891), p. 476. (T. W. R. D.)
MENANDER, of Laodicea on the Lycus, Greek rhetorician
and commentator. Two incomplete treatises on epideictic
(or show) speeches have been preserved under his name, but it
is generally considered that they cannot be by the same author.
Bursian attributes the first to Menander, whom he placed in the
4th century, and the second to an anonymous rhetorician of
Alexandria Troas, who possibly lived in the time of Diocletian.
Others, from the superscription of the Paris MS., assign the
first to Genethlius of Petrae in Palestine. In view of the general
tradition of antiquity, that both treatises were the work of
Menander, it is possible that the author of the second was not
identical with the Menander mentioned by Suïdas; since the name
is of frequent occurrence in later Greek literature. The first
treatise, entitled Διαίρεσις τῶν ἐπιδεικτικῶν, discusses the different
kinds of epideictic speeches; the second, Περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, has
special titles for each chapter.
Text in L. Spengel’s Rhetores graeci, iii. 329–446, and in C. Bursian’s “Der Rhetor Menandros und seine Schriften” in Abhandl. der bayer. Akad. der Wissenschaften, xvi. (1882); see also W. Nitsche, Der Rhetor M. und die Scholien zu Demosthenes; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship (1906), i. 338; W. Christ, Gesch. der griechischen Litteratur (1898), § 550.
MENANDER PROTECTOR (Προτίκτορ, i.e. one of the imperial bodyguards), Byzantine historian, was born in Constantinople in the middle of the 6th century A.D. The little that is known of his life is contained in the account of himself quoted by Suïdas. He at first took up the study of law, but abandoned it for a life of pleasure. When his fortunes were low, the patronage accorded to literature by the emperor Maurice (582) encouraged him to try Writing history. He took as his model Agathias (q.v.), who like him had been a jurist, and his history begins at the point where Agathias leaves off. It embraces the period from the arrival of the Cotriguri Hunni in Thrace during the reign of Justinian in 558 down to the death of the emperor Tiberius in 582. Considerable fragments of the work are preserved in the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and in Suïdas. Although the style is sometimes bombastic, he is considered trustworthy and is one of the most valuable authorities for the history of the 6th century, especially on geographical and ethnographical matters. He was an eye-witness of some of the events he describes. Like Agathias, he wrote epigrams, one of which, on a Persian magus, who became a convert to Christianity and died the death of a martyr, is preserved in the Greek anthology (Anth. Pal. i. 101).
The fragments will be found in C. W. Müller, Frag. hist. graec. iv. 200; J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, cxiii., and L. Dindorf, Historici graeci minores, ii.; see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).
MENANGKABOS, the most civilized of all the true Malays of Sumatra, inhabiting the mountains above Padang. Their district is regarded as the cradle of the Malay race, and thence began, about 1160, those migrations which ended in the true Malays becoming the dominant race throughout the peninsula and the Malay Archipelago. The Menangkabos are said to be the original conquerors of the island, and the real form of the word is Menang-Karbau (“victory of the buffalo”), in reference to a local legend of a fight between a Sumatran and Javanese buffalo, ending in victory for the former. Though converts to Islam, the ancient confederate village communes and the matriarchal system still exist. The people are divided into clans, the chiefs together forming the district council. Early in the 19th century a religious sect was founded among the Manangkabos, known as “Padris” from its zealous proselytism, or Orang puti (white men) from the converts being dressed in white. The tendency was towards asceticism, the chief tenet being the prohibition of opium, the use of which was made a capital offence. The sect brought a large portion of the interior of Sumatra under its rule, but the neighbouring tribes asked the Dutch to protect them, and this led to the Netherlands government acquiring the Menangkabo territory.
MÉNANT, JOACHIM (1820–1899), French magistrate and orientalist, was born at Cherbourg on the 16th of April 1820. He was educated for the law, and became vice-president of the civil tribunal of Rouen in 1878, and a member of the cour d’appel three years later. But he became best known by his studies on the cuneiform inscriptions. Among his works on the subject of Assyriology are: Recueil d’alphabets des écritures cunéiformes (1860); Exposé des éléments de la grammaire assyrienne (1868); Le Syllabaire assyrien (2 vols., 1869–1873); Les Langues perdues de la Perse et de l’Assyrie (2 vols., 1885–1886); Les Pierres gravées de la Haute-Asie (2 vols., 1883–1886). He also collaborated with Julius Oppert. He was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions in 1887, and died in Paris on the 30th of August 1899.
His daughter Delphine (b. 1850) received a prize from the Academy for her Les Parsis, histoire des communautés zoroastriennes de l’Inde (1898), and was sent in 1900–1901 to British India on a scientific mission, of which she published a report in 1903.
MÉNARD, LOUIS NICOLAS (1822–1901), French man of letters, was born in Paris on the 19th of October 1822. His versatile genius occupied itself in turn with chemistry, poetry, painting and history. In 1843 he published, under the pseudonym of L. de Senneville, a translation of Prométhée délivré. Turning to chemistry, he discovered collodion in 1846, but its value was not recognized at the time; and its application later to surgery and photography brought him no advantage. Louis Ménard was a socialist, always in advance of the reform movements of his time. After 1848 he was condemned to imprisonment for his Prologue d’une révolution. He escaped to London, returning to Paris only in 1852. Until 1860 he occupied himself with classical studies, the fruits of which are to be seen in his Poèmes (1855), Polythéisme hellénique (1863), and two academic theses, De sacra poesi graecorum and La Morale avant les philosophes (1860). The next ten years Ménard spent chiefly among the Barbizon artists, and he exhibited several pictures. He was in London at the time of the Commune, and defended it with his pen. In 1887 he became professor at the École des Arts décoratifs, and in 1895 professor of universal history at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. His Rêveries d’un païen mystique (1876), which contained sonnets, philosophical dialogues and some stories, was followed in 1896 by Poëmes et rêveries d’un païen mystique. Ménard died in Paris on the 12th of February 1901.
His works include: Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient (1882); Histoire des Israélites d’après l’exégèse biblique (1883), and Histoire des Grecs (1884–1886). There is an appreciation of Ménard in the opening chapter of Maurice Barrès’s Voyage de Sparte.
MENASHA (an Indian word meaning “thorn” or “island”),
a city of Winnebago county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., 88 m. N. of
Milwaukee, and 14 m. N. of Oshkosh, attractively situated at
the N. extremity of Lake Winnebago at its outlet into the Fox
river. Pop. (1890), 4581; (1900), 5589 (1535 foreign-born);
(1905, state census), 5960; (1910), 6081. Menasha is served
by the Minneapolis, St Paul & Sault Ste Marie, the Chicago,
Milwaukee & St Paul, and the Chicago & North-Western
railways, and by an inter-urban electric railway system. Several
bridges across the Fox River connect Menasha with Neenah,
with which it really forms one community industrially. Doty
Island, at the mouth of the river and divided about equally
between the cities, is a picturesque and popular summer resort.
