Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c6.28

c6.28

His successor, Buddhadāsa (A.D. 339) was himself a great physician, and “out of benevolence towards the inhabitants of the island, the sovereign provided hospitals for all villages, and appointed physicians to them. The Rāja having composed the work Sāratthasaṅgaha, containing the substance of all medical science, ordained that there should be a physician for every twice five villages, and set apart one twentieth of the produce of fields for the maintenance of these physicians” (Mahāvaṃsa, Ch. XXXVIII). Thus he followed in the footsteps of the great Duṭṭha Gāmaṇi, who on his death-bed was able to say, “I have daily maintained at eighteen different places, hospitals with suitable diet and medicines prepared by medical practitioners for the infirm” (Mahāvaṃsa, Ch. XXXII). The great Parākrama Bāhu I. pursued the same policy eight hundred years later.