[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 practitioners 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 pronounces 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. xxxii. p. 196.]

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

[Footnote 3:  Mahawanso, ch. xxxvii. p. 242-245.]

Botany.—­The fact that the basis of their Materia Medica has been chiefly derived from the vegetable kingdom, coupled with the circumstance 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 classes 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 assigned 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.]