501 



CHAP. IX. 



ASTKONOMY, ETC. 



EDUCATION. As the Brahmans had been the first to in- 

 troduce the practice of the mechanical arts, so they were 

 also the earliest instructors of youth in the rudiments of 

 general knowledge. Pandukabhaya, who was afterwards 

 king, was " educated in every accomplishment by Pandulo, 

 a Brahman, who taught him along with his own son." 1 The 

 Buddhist priests became afterwards the national instructors, 

 and a passage in the Rajavali seems to imply that writing 

 was regarded as one of the distinctive accomplishments 

 of the priesthood, not often possessed by the laity, as it 

 mentions that the brother of the king of Kalany, in the 

 second century before Christ, had been taught to write 

 by a tirunansi, " and made such progress that he could 

 write as well as the tirunansi himself." 2 The story in 

 the Rajavali of an intrigue which was discovered by 

 " the sound of the fall of a letter," shows that the mate- 

 rial then in use in the second century before Christ, was 

 the same as at the present day, the prepared leaf of a palm 

 tree. 3 



The most popular sovereigns were likewise the most 

 sedulous patrons of learning. Prakrama I. founded 

 schools at Pollanarrua 4 ; and it is mentioned with due 

 praise in the Rajaratnacari, that the King Wijayo Bahu 

 III., who reigned at Dambedenia, A.D. 1240, " esta- 

 blished a school in every village, and charged the priests 

 who superintended them to take nothing from the pupils. 



1 Mahawanso, ch. x. p. GO. 



2 Rajavali, p. 189. 



4 Mahawanso, ch. Ixxii. UPHAM'S 

 version, vol. i. p. 274. 



