520 



SCIENCES AXD SOCIAL ARTS. 



[PART IV. 



on physical science, cosmography, materia medica, and 

 surgery. From it, too, they have borrowed the limited 

 knowledge of astronomy, possessed by the individuals 

 who combined with astrology and the casting of nati- 

 vities, the practice of palmistry and the interpretation 

 of dreams. In Sanskrit, they have treatises on music 

 and painting, on versification and philology ; and their 

 translations include a Singhalese version of those por- 

 tions of the Ramayana, which commemorate the con- 

 quest of Lanka. 



TTT. ELU AND SINGHALESE. There is no more 

 striking evidence of the intellectual inferiority of the 

 modern, as compared with the ancient inhabitants of 

 Ceylon, than is afforded by the popular literature of 

 the latter, and the contrast it presents to the works of 

 former ages. Descending from the gravity of religious 

 disquisition and the dignity of history and science, the 

 authors of later times have been content to limit 

 their efforts to works of fiction and amusement, and to 

 ballads and doggerel descriptions of places or passing 

 events. 



But, to the credit of the Singhalese, it must be 



wanso, where a divinely endowed 

 princess fed Pandukabhaya, B.C. 437, 

 and five hundred of his followers 

 with the repast which she was taking 

 to her father and his reapers, the re- 

 freshment being " scarcely diminished 

 in quantity as if one person only 

 had eaten therefrom." Mahmcanso, 

 ch. x. p. 62. The preparation of the 

 high road for the procession of the 

 sacred bo-tree after its landing (Ma- 

 hawanso, ch. xix. p. 116), and the 

 order to clear a road through the 

 wilderness for the march of the king 

 at the inauguration of Buddhism, 

 recall the words of the prophet, 

 " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, 

 make straight a highway in the 

 desert." (Isaiah, xl. 3.) And we 

 nre reminded of the prophecy of 



Isaiah as to the kingdom of peace, in 

 which " the leopard shall he down 

 with the kid and the calf with the lion, 

 and a young child shall lead them," 

 by the Singhalese historians, in de- 

 scribing the religious repose of the 

 kingdom of Asoka under the in- 

 fluence of the religion of Buddha, 

 where "the elk and the wild hog 

 were the guardians of the gardens 

 and fields, and the tiger led forth the 

 cattle to graze and reconducted them 

 in safety to their pens." Maha- 

 wanso, ch. v. p. 22. The narrative 

 of the "judgment of Solomon," in 

 the matter of the contested child 

 (1 Kings, ch. iii.), has its parallel in 

 a story in every respect similar in 

 the Pansyiapanas-jataka. ROBERT'S 

 Orient. Ittmtr. p. 191. 



