Community: Sri Lanka epigraphy

This inscription was discovered by Senarath Paranavitana in 1931 at the site of an ancient monastery, now called Periyakaḍu-vihāra, near Nälava in the Ihala Visidekē Kōrale of the Hiriyāla Hatpattu, Kuruṇǟgala District. It consists of four lines engraved on a rock and can be dated on palaeographic grounds to the last decades of the fifth or the first half of the sixth century. The epigraph records that an individual named Naga, residing at Taḷahaya, settled a debt that he had incurred and caused the cessation of his slavery in the royal monastery of Ekadora, the latter being the ancient name for Periyakaḍu-vihāra. It is well known that, in ancient Sri Lanka, as in India, one particular class of slave was the iṇa-dāsa – a person who had submitted himself to slavery on account of a debt that he had incurred. In such instances, the payment of the debt, either in money or in services rendered, would automatically result in the cessation of the slavery caused by the debt.

This inscription is engraved in larger and clear characters on a rock by the side of the stream known as Kospotu Oya, close to the dam at Alavaḷa in the Hēvāvisse Kōraḷē of the Kuruṇǟgala District. Its existence was recorded by Edward Müller in his Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon (1883: 72, no. 171) but he provides neither the text nor the translation of the record. Müller also reported as fact an erroneous local legend that the text contained a grant to the nearby temple of Maedagama by king Parākramabāhu of Dambadeniya. In fact, the inscription registers the grant of extensive fields at Badalagoḍa to the Laṅkātilaka temple. Unfortunately, the name of the king who was responsible for the grant is no longer legible, due to the damaged condition of the first ten lines of the text. The lands affected by the grant lie close to the location of this epigraph and it was presumably inscribed here so that the local people, particularly the tenants, could be made aware of the fact. The same grant is recorded in two inscriptions – one in Sinhalese (IN03212) and one in Tamil (IN03214) – at the temple itself. However, the inscriptions at Laṅkātilaka refer to a much smaller extent of land at Badalagoḍa – only fourteen yāḷas, compared to the ninety yāḷas mentioned in the present inscription. This has led Senarath Paranavitana to conclude that the present inscription is somewhat later than those at the temple. As he suggests, the probability is that, after the publication of the temple inscriptions, more lands were brought under the plough below the Batalagoḍa tank and the income from these fields was also dedicated to the Laṅkātilaka temple.

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This set of four copper plates are preserved in the Laṅkātilaka Temple at Udunuwara in Kandy District. These plates are dated in the seventh year of Rājāhirājasiṁha, who reigned from 1781 until 1798. The fourth plate is inscribed with grants of lands to the temple from this monarch and his predecessor, Kīrtiśrī Rājasiṁha (r. 1747–1781). The first three plates, meanwhile, are engraved with copies of earlier grants to the temple made by kings Bhuvanaikabāhu IV and Vikramabāhu III in the fourteenth century. These grants were originally recorded on a rock to the south of the temple (IN03212 and IN03213). However, there are some discrepancies between the rock inscriptions and the texts engraved on these plates. It cannot simply be the case that the engravers of the copper-plates struggled to decipher the original inscriptions, since the discrepancies affect portions of the text which remain clearly legible on the rock. Certain discrepancies appear to be the result of the eighteenth-century scribes having adapted the fourteenth-century text to match their notions of propriety and to magnify the part of Senā-Laṁkādhikāra in the grant to the temple. Furthermore, Senarath Paranavitana conjectures that the copper plates were not based directly on the rock inscriptions but were instead copied from earlier copper-plate charters, which contained variant versions of the texts. It certainly seems to have been the case that the grants proclaimed in the rock inscriptions were also recorded on copper plates, since the inscription of Bhuvanaikabāhu declares as much.