Community: Sri Lanka epigraphy

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This inscription is engraved on the rock outside the gate (vāhalkaḍa) to the west of the main shrine of Laṅkātilaka. It consists of four lines of writing, although the third and fourth lines are entirely illegible due to the weathered condition of the rock. The final line appears to end abruptly, suggesting that the engraving of the record was never completed. The first and second lines refer to the eighteenth year of Bhuvanaikabāhu. Senarath Paranavitana claimed that this must be a reference to Bhuvanaikabāhu V, since the reign of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV did not extent to eighteen years and, on palaeographic grounds, the inscription is cannot belong to any of other kings of that name. Bhuvanaikabāhu V’s reign began in 1371–1372 A.D., hence the present inscription dates from 1389–1390 A.D. The second line of the inscription refers to the vihara and the devālas but, due to the fragmentary nature of the document, the purpose of the record is not clear.

This inscription is one of three lengthy epigraphs engraved on the rock to the south of the Buddhist shrine of Laṅkātilaka in the village of Rabbēgomuwa in Uḍunuvara, Kandy District. Two extensive areas on the surface of the rock are covered with deeply and carefully engraved writing. The upper stretch contains two fourteenth-century Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other (IN03212 and IN03213). Meanwhile, the present inscription occupies a lower stretch of the rock. It consists of forty-six lines in Tamil and seems to date from a similar time period to the Sinhalese inscriptions. Its contents record grants of land and other donations made to the monastery at Laṅkātilaka by its founder – the minister Senālaṅkādhikāra – and by the inhabitants of the realm. The text ends with imprecations against those who would hinder the continuance of the grant, and exhortations made by the minister to kings and minsters of the present and the future for the maintenance of the shrine. The exhortations are embodied in two Sanskrit stanzas with an expanded paraphrase in Tamil. The same stanzas also feature in the Sinhalese inscription of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV on the same rock (IN03212) and the second is included in the rock inscription at Alavaḷa-amuṇa (IN03217), which registers further grants to the Laṅkātilaka shrine. This would seem to suggest that these stanzas were not specially composed for the present inscription but were instead standard forms for expressing such sentiments in this period.

This inscription is one of three lengthy epigraphs engraved on the rock to the south of the Buddhist shrine of Laṅkātilaka in the village of Rabbēgomuwa in Uḍunuvara, Kandy District. Two extensive areas on the surface of the rock are covered with deeply and carefully engraved writing. An inscription of forty-six lines in Tamil (IN03214) is engraved on the lower stretch of the rock. The upper stretch contains two Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other. The top record is dated in the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV of Gaṁpaḷa (IN03212) and the bottom record is from the reign of his successor, Vikramabāhu III. The second of these two records is dealt with here. It registers the granting of two villages – Paṭṭiyegama and Rabbogamu – to the monastery at Laṅkātilaka by the king and his Äpā (heir-apparent). The inscription is dated on the tenth day of the waxing moon in the month of Unduvap in the third year of the king’s reign. Vikramabāhu III reigned from 1357 to 1374, making the date of this inscription November-December 1359. Another version of the present inscription is engraved on a set of copper plates preserved inside the Laṅkātilaka temple (IN03216).

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This inscription is one of three lengthy epigraphs engraved on the rock to the south of the Buddhist shrine of Laṅkātilaka in the village of Rabbēgomuwa in Uḍunuvara, Kandy District. Two extensive areas on the surface of the rock are covered with deeply and carefully engraved writing. The upper stretch contains two Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other: the first of these records is dealt with here and features thirty-three lines, dated in the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV of Gaṁpaḷa; the second consists of seven lines from the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV’s successor, Vikramabāhu III (IN03213). Meanwhile, an inscription of forty-six lines in Tamil (IN03214) is engraved on the lower stretch of the rock. Another version of the present inscription is engraved on a set of copper plates preserved inside the Laṅkātilaka temple (IN03216).

The present inscription is dated in Śaka 1266, being the third year of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV. This date is equivalent to 1343–1344 A.D. The contents of the inscription consist of a fairly detailed account of the founding of the Laṅkātilaka shrine, mainly due to the efforts of Senālaṅkādhikāra. This is followed by a list of lands and other donations made to the shrine by the king, Senālaṅkādhikāra and other notables of the period. It ends with imprecations against those who would hinder the continuance of the grant, and exhortations made by the minister to kings and minsters of the present and the future for the maintenance of the shrine. The exhortations are embodied in two Sanskrit stanzas with an expanded paraphrase in Sinhalese. The same stanzas also feature in the Tamil inscription on the same rock (IN03214) and the second is included in the rock inscription at Alavaḷa-amuṇa (IN03217), which registers further grants to the Laṅkātilaka shrine. This would seem to suggest that these stanzas were not specially composed for the present inscription but were instead standard forms for expressing such sentiments in this period.

This inscription is engraved on a rock situated in a stretch of paddy-fields in the village of Nugaliyadda in Pāta Hēvāhäṭa, Kandy District, and about a quarter of a mile to the south of the well-known Sagama temple, a shrine dating from Kandyan times. The record was first published by H. C. P. Bell in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 22 (1910), pp. 364–365. It is dated in the ninth year of Bhuvanaikabāhu. On the basis of the palaeography, which dates the inscription to the fourteenth century, this king could be either Bhuvanaikabāhu IV or V. However, as the document registers a grand by the Minister Aḷakeśvara, a dignitary who did not come into prominence until after Bhuvanaikabāhu IV’s death, it is clear that the king in question must be the later monarch. Bhuvanaikabāhu V’s reign began in 1371–1372 A.D., hence the present inscription can be dated to 1380–1381 A.D. The language of the record, which is Sinhalese with some Sanskrit tatsama forms, is very ornate in style, the author having used simile, metaphors and, at one point, the highly artificial figure of speech called the śleṣa (double entendre). The inscription registers a donation of lands in the village of Saputala in Sagama by the two brothers Aḷakeśvara and Devamantrīśvara to the god Nātha of Senkaḍagala and the god of the Nā tree of unspecified location, in gratitude to these deities for having crowned with success the efforts of the two dignitaries to place the affairs of the Church and the State in a stable condition. The village of Saputala, where the lands granted were situated, is modern Haputalē, which adjoins to the north and west the stretch of paddy fields where the record was found. The donors, Aḷakeśvara and Devamantrīśvara, are described in terms indicating that they were second in importance only to the king. They can be identified with the two brothers Aḷakeśvara or Aḷagakkonāra and Dev-himi, who are eulogised in very high terms in the Mayūra-sandeśa, a Sinhalese poem composed in the reign of Bhuvanaikabāhu V. H. C. P. Bell identified the Aḷakeśvara of the present inscription with Vīra Aḷakeśvara, who wielded power on two occasions in the troubled period prior to the accession of Parākramabāhu VI (as recorded in an oft-quoted passage in the Saddharmaratnākara). However, Senarath Paranavitana offered an alternative interpretation, arguing that the Aḷakeśvara mentioned here was in fact Vīra Aḷakeśvara’s uncle, a minister who rose to fame in the reign of Vikramabāhu III and, under the title of prabhurāja, became the virtual dictator of the Sinhalese country.

This inscription is engraved on a rock at the northern end of the village reservoir at Nilagama, behind a huge boulder which contains an ancient Buddhist cave-temple. Edward Müller mentions the Nilagama Vihāra in his Ancient Inscription in Ceylon (1883: 46–47, no. 79) and discusses certain inscriptions at the site but he makes no explicit reference to the present record and it is not clear whether he was aware of its existence. The first definite record of the present inscription dates from 1935, when the text was copied by an overseer working on behalf of Senarath Paranavitana. On palaeographic grounds, the epigraph can be dated to the sixth or seventh century. It is a private document and records that certain named individuals freed themselves from slavery in the Nilagama Tisa-arami Raji-maha-vahara by paying a hundred (kahāpaṇas?) each. The Nilagama Tisa-arami Raji-maha-vahara was clearly the ancient name of the monastery on this site: Nilagama remains the name of the village to this day, indicating that it has been in continuous occupation since the time of the inscription; the monastery itself was called Tisa-arami, presumably because it was founded by a king named Tissa.

The inscription is dated in the reign of a king styled Mapurumu Budasa Daḷi-Mugalana Maharaji Apaya. The word expressing the regnal year is not entirely clear and can be read as either paḍama (first) or aṭama (eighth), although Senarath Paranavitana reckoned the latter more likely. As for the king, only ‘Daḷi-Mugalana’ can be treated as a personal name. The rest of his appellation can be disregarded as mere titles, since the same epithets appear, either together or separately, in the names of other kings. ‘Mugalana’ is obviously the same as Pāli ‘Moggallāna’, which is the name of three kings mentioned in the chronicles. Moggallāna I can be discounted, since he is nowhere mentioned with the soubriquet ‘Daḷi’ or similar affixed to his name. The same logic cannot help to decide between Moggallāna II and Moggallāna III, since the Sinhalese Pūjāvalī refers to the Moggallāna II as Daḷa Mugalan and the Cūḷavaṁsa states that Moggallāna III was surnamed Dalla. However, if we follow Paranavitana’s reading of the regnal year as the ‘eighth’, then it follows that the king in question must be Moggallāna II, who is said to have reigned for twenty years, and not his later namesake, who ruled for just three years. Geiger dates Moggallāna II’s accession to 537 A.D.