IN03069 Kukurumahan-Damana Pillar Inscription

The inscription is engraved on all four sides of a stone pillar. It was discovered by the Archaeological Commissioner, H. C. P. Bell, in September 1896. The pillar was lying almost embedded in the ground about thirty miles west-north-west of Anurādhapura in what is now the Vilpattu National Park. Bell erroneously identified the find-spot as Kukurumahan Damana (an identification repeated by Wickremasinghe) when it was in fact Mallimaḍu, according to C. W. Nicholas in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1963). The inscription consists of 73 lines in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th century A.D. It is dated in the eleventh of the reign of king Siri San̆g-bo and records the granting of certain immunities by the king and his Council in respect of Kereḷǟ-gama, a village belonging to the hospital built by the Commander-in-Chief Gēna opposite the nunnery called Mahindārāma on the High Street of the Inner City of Anuradhapura. Wickremasinghe argues that the biruda Siri San̆g-bo refers in this instance to Kassapa IV, whose reign lasted from 912 to 929.