Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 92

"King, are there any persons not thy relations?

"There are many who are not my relations.

"Besides thy relations, and those who are not thy relations, is there, or is there not, any other human being in existence?

"Lord, _there is myself._

"Ruler of men, Sadhu! thou art wise."

The course of education suitable for a prince in the thirteenth century included what was technically termed the eighteen sciences: "1. oratory, 2. general knowledge, 3. grammar, 4. poetry, 5. languages, 6. astronomy, 7. the art of giving counsel, 8. the means of attaining _nirwana_[1], 9.

the discrimination of good and evil, 10. shooting with the bow, 11.

management of the elephant, 12. penetration of thoughts, 13. discernment of invisible beings, 14. etymology, 15. history, 16. law, 17. rhetoric, 18. physic."[2]

[Footnote 1: "Nirwana" is the state of suspended sensation, which const.i.tutes the eternal bliss of the Buddhist in a future state.]

[Footnote 2: _Rajaratnacari_ p. 100.]

_Astronomy_.--Although the Singhalese derived from the Hindus their acquaintance, such as it was, with the heavenly bodies and their movements, together with their method of taking observations, and calculating eclipses[1], yet in this list the term "astrology" would describe better than "astronomy" the science practically cultivated in Ceylon, which then, as now, had its professors in every village to construct horoscopes, and cast the nativities of the peasantry.

Dutugaimunu, in the second century before Christ, after his victory over Elala, commended himself to his new subjects by his fatherly care in providing "a doctor, an astronomer, and a priest, for each group of sixteen villages throughout the kingdom;"[2] and he availed himself of the services of the astrologer to name the proper day of the moon on which to lay the foundation of his great religious structures.[3]

[Footnote 1: A summary of the knowledge possessed by the early Hindus of _astronomy_ and _mathematical science_ will be found in MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE'S _History of India during the Hindu and Mahomedan Periods_, book iii. ch. i. p. 127.]

[Footnote 2: _Rajaratnacari_ p. 40.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. xxix. p. 169-173.]

King Bujas Raja, A.D. 339, increased his claim to popular acknowledgment by adding "an astrologer, a devil-dancer, and a preacher."[1] At the present day the astronomical treatises possessed by the Singhalese are, generally speaking, borrowed, but with considerable variation, from the Sanskrit.[2]

[Footnote 1: TURNOUR'S _Epitome_, p. 27.]

[Footnote 2: HARDY'S _Buddhism_, ch. i. p. 22.]

_Medicine_.--Another branch of royal education was medicine. The Singhalese, from their intercourse with the Hindus, had ample opportunities for acquiring a knowledge of this art, which was practised in India before it was known either in Persia or Arabia; and there is reason to believe that the distinction of having been the discoverers of chemistry which has been so long awarded to the Arabs, might with greater justice have been claimed for the Hindus. In point of antiquity the works of Charak and Susruta on Surgery and Materia Medica, belong to a period long anterior to Greber, and the earliest writers of Arabia; and served as authorities both for them and the Mediaeval Greeks.[1] Such was their celebrity that two Hindu physicians, Manek and Saleh, lived at Bagdad in the eighth century, at the court of Haroun al Raschid.[2]

[Footnote 1: See Dr. ROYLE'S _Essay on the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 2: Professor Dietz, quoted by Dr. ROYLE.]

One of the edicts of Asoca engraved on the second tablet at Girnar, relates to the establishment of a system of medical administration throughout his dominions, "as well as in the parts occupied by the faithful race as far as Tambaparni (Ceylon), both medical aid for men, and medical aid for animals, together with medicaments of all sorts, suitable for animals and men."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Journal Asiat. Soc. Bengal_, vol. vii. part. i. p. 159.]

These injunctions of the Buddhist sovereign of Magadha were religiously observed by many of the Ceylon kings. In the "register of deeds of piety" in which Dutugaimunu, in the second century before Christ, caused to be enrolled the numerous proofs of his devotion to the welfare of his subjects, it was recorded that the king had "maintained at eighteen different places, hospitals provided with suitable diet and medicines prepared by medical pract.i.tioners for the infirm."[1] In the second century of the Christian era, a physician and a surgeon were borne on the establishments of the great monasteries[2], and even some of the sovereigns acquired renown by the study and practice of physic. On Bujas Raja, who became king of Ceylon, A.D. 339, the _Mahawanso_ p.r.o.nounces the eulogium, that he "patronised the virtuous, discountenanced the wicked, rendered the indigent happy, and comforted the diseased by providing medical relief."[3] He was the author of a work on Surgery, which is still held in repute by his countrymen; he built hospitals for the sick and asylums for the maimed, and the benefit of his science and skill was not confined to his subjects alone, but was equally extended to the relief of the lower animals, elephants, horses, and other suffering creatures.

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xii. p. 196.]

[Footnote 2: Rock inscription at Mihintala, A.D. 262.]

[Footnote 3: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xvii. p. 242-245.]

_Botany._--The fact that the basis of their _Materia Medica_ has been chiefly derived from the vegetable kingdom, coupled with the circ.u.mstance that their clothing and food were both drawn from the same source, may have served to give to the Singhalese an early and intimate knowledge of plants. It was at one time believed that they were likewise possessed of a complete and general botanical arrangement; but MOON, whose attention was closely directed to this subject, failed to discover any trace of a system; and came to the conclusion that, although well aware of the various parts of a flower, and their apparent uses, they have never applied that knowledge to a distribution of plants by cla.s.ses or orders.[1]

[Footnote 1: MOON'S _Catalogue of Indigenous and Exotic Plants growing in Ceylon._ 4to. Colombo, 1824, p. 2.]

_Geometry._--The invention of geometry has been ascribed to the Egyptians, who were annually obliged to ascertain the extent to which their lands had been affected by the inundations of the Nile, and to renew the obliterated boundaries. A similar necessity led to like proficiency amongst the people of India and Ceylon, the minute subdivision of whose lands under their system of irrigation necessitated frequent calculations for the definition of limits and the division of the crops.[1]

[Footnote 1: The "_Suriya Sidhanta,_" generally a.s.signed to the fifth or sixth century, contains a system of Hindu trigonometry, which not only goes beyond anything known to the Greeks, but involves theorems that were not discovered in Europe till the sixteenth century.--MOUNT-STUART ELPHINSTONE'S _India,_ b. iii. ch. i. p. 129.]

_Lightning Conductors._--In connection with physical science, a curious pa.s.sage occurs in the _Mahawanso_ which gives rise to a conjecture that early in the third century after Christ, the Singhalese had some dim idea of the electrical nature of lightning, and a belief, however erroneous, of the possibility of protecting their buildings by means of conductors.

The notices contained in THEOPHRASTUS and PLINY show that the Greeks and the Romans were aware of the quality of attraction exhibited by amber and tourmaline.[1] The Etruscans, according to the early annalists of Borne, possessed the power of invoking and compelling thunder storms.[2]

Numa Pompilius would appear to have antic.i.p.ated Franklin by drawing lightning from the clouds; and Tullus Hostilius, his successor, was killed by an explosion, whilst attempting unskilfully the same experiment.[3]

[Footnote 1: The electrical substances "lyncurium" and "theamedes" have each been conjectured to be the "tourmaline" which, is found in Ceylon.]

[Footnote 2: "Vel cogi fulmina vel impetrari." --PLINY, _Nat. Hist._ lib. ii. ch. lii.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_. There is an interesting paper on the subject of the knowledge of electricity possessed by the ancients, by Dr. FALCONER in the _Memoirs of the Manchester Philosophical Society,_ A.D. 1788, vol.

iii. p. 279.]

CTESIAS, a contemporary of Xenophon, spent much of his life in Persia, and says that he twice saw the king demonstrate the efficacy of an iron sword planted in the ground in dispersing clouds, hail, and lightning[1]; and the knowledge of conduction is implied by an expression of LUCAN, who makes Aruns, the Etrurian flamen, concentrate the flashes of lightning and direct them beneath the surface of the earth:--

"dispersos fulminus ignes Colligit, et terrae maesto c.u.m murmure cendit."

_Phars_. lib. i. v. 606.

[Footnote 1: PHOTIUS, who has preserved the fragment (_Bibl._ lxxii.), after quoting the story of CTESIAS as to the iron it question being found in a mysterious Indian lake, adds, regarding the sword, [Greek: "phesi oe peri autou hoti pegnimenos en te ge nephous kai chalazes kai presteron estin apotropaios. Kai idein auton tauta phesi Basileos dis poiesantos."] See BAEHR'S _C'tesiae Reliquiae,_ &c., p. 248, 271.]

There is scarcely an indication in any work that has come down to us from the first to the fifteenth century, that the knowledge of such phenomena survived in the western world; but the books of the Singhalese contain allusions which demonstrate that in the _third_ and in the _fifth_ century it was the practice in Ceylon to apply mechanical devices with the hope of securing edifices from lightning.

The most remarkable of these pa.s.sages occurs in connection with the following subject. It will be remembered that Dutugaimunu, by whom the great dagoba, known as the Ruanwelle, was built at Anaraj.a.poora, died during the progress of the work, B.C. 137, the completion of which he entrusted to his brother and successor Saidaitissa.[1] The latest act of the dying king was to form "the square capital on which the spire was afterwards to be placed[2], and on each side of this there was a representation of the sun."[3] The _Mahawanso_ states briefly, that in obedience to his brother's wishes, Saidaitissa "completed the pinnacle,"[4] for which the square capital before alluded to served as a base; but the _Dipawanso_, a chronicle older than the _Mahawanso_ by a century and a half, gives a minute account of this stage of the work, and says that this pinnacle, which he erected between the years 137 and 119 before Christ, was formed _of gla.s.s_.[5]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xii. p. 198. See _ante_, Vol. I. Pt.

III. ch. v. p. 358.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, ch. x.x.xi. p. 192.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, ch. x.x.xii. p. 193.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, ch. x.x.xiii. p. 200.]

[Footnote 5: "Karapesi _khara-pindun_ maha thupe varuttame." For this reference to the _Dipawano_ I am indebted to Mr. DE ALWIS of Colombo.]

A subsequent king, Amanda, A.D. 20, fixed a chatta (in imitation of the white umbrella which is emblematic of royalty) on the spire[1], and two centuries later, Sanghatissa, who reigned A.D. 234 to 246, "caused this chatta to be gilt, and set four gems in the centre of the four emblems of the sun, each of which cost a lac."[2] And now follows the pa.s.sage which is interesting from its reference, however obscure, to the electrical nature of lightning. The _Mahawanso_ continues: "he in like manner placed a gla.s.s pinnacle on the spire _to serve as a protection against lightning_."[3]

[Footnote 1: _Mahawanso_, ch. x.x.xv. p. 215.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, ch. x.x.xvi. p. 229.]