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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol. IX. 



maintenance. He also appointed medical men to attend on 

 his infantry, and veterinary surgeons to attend on cattle and 

 elephants. Along the roads he built halls for the lame and 

 blind. It is said that " When he went out of the palace, 

 his surgical instruments were always in his waist, and he 

 operated upon all sick persons whom he met." King Agbo, 

 who reigned six years, from 782 A.D., caused medicines to be 

 distributed among the sick; and Dappula II., who com- 

 menced his reign in 795 A.D., is most highly spoken of in this 

 respect, in the following words : "That most gracious Prince 

 built a hospital at Polonnaruwa. He also in like manner 

 built a hospital at Pandaviya, and endowed it with villages 

 which yielded the necessaries of life. He also built in 

 several places halls for the cripples and the blind. In short, 

 he did not leave anything undone which was called meri- 

 torious ; he even gave growing paddy crops to cattle, and 

 rice, mixed with honey and sugar, to children." 



Parakrama Bahu, who reigned from 1163 to 1196 A.D., 

 built a large hospital capable of accommodating hundreds of 

 patients, and appointed a manservant and maidservant to 

 attend on each patient for the purpose of supplying him 

 or her with necessaries of life and medicine. He ordered 

 medicines and the necessaries of life to be made and stored 

 in the hospital, and appointed skilful and salaried medical 

 men to attend on the patients. Divested of his royal robes, 

 he visited the hospital four times a month, and inquired into 

 the nature of the disease of each patient, and the mode of 

 treatment adopted ; and whenever the treatment was in his 

 opinion erroneous, he taught the physicians the proper 

 method, and attended himself to some cases. 



When the patients recovered, he distributed clothes 

 amongst them. This prince is said to have cured a crow of 

 a tumor, and the bird, it is stated, would not leave the hospital 

 until attended to ! Nor was sanitation ignored. King Pan- 

 dukabhayo, who reigned 437 B.C., employed one hundred and 

 fifty men to carry dead bodies to the cemetery, and one hun- 



