၅။ ကေနာင္အိမ္ေရွ႕မင္း
However, during the time of King Mindon, the leader in action, the sower of the seed, was the Heir Apparent, the Kanaung Crown Prince. The Crown Prince was a keen and skillful operator. U Bo Hlaing on the other hand had the ideas.
Under the combined leadership of these two the sections of the economy that at this point were advancing had reason to expect that the kingdom of Burma would advance to become a modern state.
The Kanaung Crown Prince was the younger full brother of King Mindon. He was born in 1181(1819) to King Sāyawadī and his Queen, the Kyaukmaw Mayor. When King Mindon reached the summit of power, the Crown Prince became his heir-apparent.
It was at this time that English expansion brought about the second annexation of Burmese territory. For protection against the threat of further expansion, the Prince nursed the desire to see the kingdom established as an industrialised and well-armed nation.
To establish it in this way, he gave great importance to acquiring the resources and technology of the West. For this purpose he planned, with the agreement of King Mindon, to send state students to foreign countries and he organised young Burmans for this.
It is said that during King Mindon's reign ninety such state students were sent under this scheme to France, Italy and England.
We should like to demonstrate so far as we know it the foresight of the leaders of Burma in the matter of the Crown Prince's scheme for state scholars. We mentioned the book on “Compass Work” and its author Maung Shwe Bin. He, when he had finished his studies in the West, and returned to his country on the orders of the Crown Prince, translated into Burmese the subjects that he had learned. The state scholars therefore produced their “Study Books” and these are listed below.
1. A book on geology -- the science of the earth;
2. A book of mineralogy-- describing all kinds of rocks, ores of gold, silver, iron, and lead, rock sulphur and limestone, diamond- and jewel- bearing rocks;
3. A book of botany-- describing the plants that grows in the different soils of various places;
4. A book of zoology-- describing the animals and fishes of the land and sea;
5. A book of anatomy-- describing the arrangement of the thirty-two cavities of the body and so on;
6. A book of physiology-- describing how energy is produced and exchanged in living creatures -- men, animals and plants;
7. A book of chemistry-- describing the preparation and compounding of herbal medicines, the usage of all kinds of porcelain and earthenware, glasses and mirrors, all varieties of colours -- gold and silver pigments, reds, greens, yellows and blues – the distillation of sulphur, saltpeter, alcohol and other liquids, the different sorts of sand, the various flavours of things that are good to eat or drink, the different kinds of leathers, wirings for electric motors, methods of making photographic prints, different sorts of mercury-filled glass tubes for forecasting thunder, wind, rain, fog, fire and so on; coal-mining methods and the production of coal gas for lighting; and the production of various types of iron;
8. A book of physic-- describing treatments of various diseases;
9. A book of history-- including various peoples, with Natural History, Moral History accounting for the rise and fall of rulers, and Geography, describing the large and small land masses that make up continents and countries, their forests and mountains, rivers, seas and oceans;
10. A book of mathematics-- covering methods of calculation such as the gold and silver rules, fractions, decimal fractions, rule of three, square roots, cube roots in arithmetic; books of geometry dealing with compound and simple curves as well as straight lines, circumferences of circles, figures of three sides and three angles, of four and five sides and angles, variously sided figures; an elementary book of plane geometry covering figures of various boundaries, degrees of angles, the use of squared paper, comparison and calculation of areas, an elementary book of solid geometry, dealing with solid figures of three apices[sic], of four and five apices and the basic nature of a solid mass; a book of spherical geometry dealing with spherical triangles and quadrilaterals, as though drawn on the sphere of the heavens; a book of algebra describing methods of making various calculations set out with the use of letters;
11. A book on mensuration-- describing methods of measuring circles, figures of three and four sides and angles. Of solid figures, the surfaces of spheres and cones, their conversions, areas of cylinders, matrices, of four and five sided prisms – measuring length, breadth and height to obtain a surface area in square inches, hands, cubits, or else to obtain the volume;
12. A book on architecture-- which is called the architects science, showing construction methods for buildings, ships, boats and dinghies, of tunnels and bridges and so forth, using iron, timber, bricks or stone;
13. A book of Plane trigonometry, which provides the basic principles of accurately determining surface areas of buildings and forested hills, or distances and dimensions of sea areas;
14. A book of spherical trigonometry-- which shows how to calculate lengths, breadths and angles, distance and height relationships of figures on a curved surface at a height, such as the sky
15. A book of astronomy-- which might be called a handbook of astrology, describing the movements of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, planets with the stars and comets -- and how their risings are calculated;
16. A book on navigation-- describing how seamen by taking measurements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, are able to direct their ships to the port that they want over the oceans where there are no signposts;
17. A book on military affairs-- describing how bombs, artillery, musketry, and rockets go off; and other man oeuvres that belong in warfare;
18. A book on machinery-- on the mechanisms of large and small clocks; on the setting up and use of mechanical looms; on steamship and railway engines and so on; as well as various other devices used on the land and the sea.
Books of technology became available by such means. From looking at these lists of subjects we, who come later, can assess the order of priority in which Burmans of the past, of the time of the Crown Prince, made their first efforts to grasp the light of western knowledge.
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