"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]
1: "Nirwana" is the state of suspended sensation, which constitutes the eternal bliss of the Buddhist in a future state.
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]
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.
2: Rajaratnacari p. 40.
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]
1: TURNOUR'S Epitome, p. 27.