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]