  In the celebrated dialogue between the Buddhist philosopher  Nāgasena and King Milinda (often identified with the  Greco-Bactrian King Menander I, ca. 150 B.C.E.), we come across one  of the first references to the notion that an individual exists only  as an appellation or conventional designation (Pāli  paññatti, Skt, prajñapti). As  Nāgasena declares in response to the King's question about who  he is or what is he known as: “Nāgasena and so on—is only a generally understood term, a designation in common use. For  there is no permanent individuality (or self) involved in the  matter” (Questions of King Milinda, II, 1, 25).  Nāgasena's claim frames the nominalist tendency that is already  at work in the Buddhist canonical literature: just as words such as  ‘chariot’ are used only when certain parts are arranged  together to form a spatio-temporal entity we ordinarily designate as  such, so also an individual (satto) is nothing but a  conventional designation that applies to the five aggregates. 