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 Mediæval 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]
1: See Dr. ROYLE'S Essay on the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine, p. 64.
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]
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.
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxii. p. 196.
2: Rock inscription at Mihintala, A.D. 262.