IN03100 Alutväva Pillar Inscription

The inscription is engraved on three sides of a quadrangular stone pillar found at Alutwväva (Alutwewa, a hamlet near Eppavala), where it was examined by H. C. P. Bell in 1895. The text gives details of a council warrant. Certain portions of the text are no longer legible and, as a consequence, the exact purport of the warrant is unclear. The readable part of the inscription enumerates certain properties in Mahademeṭi-kuḷiya, which are described as being under the management of one Tinḍī Kitu. However, given the damage to the text, it is not possible to say whether the properties were gifted to this man or whether he only received certain privileges in connection with them.

 

The inscription gives the date upon which the warrant was approved and the date upon which it was proclaimed. Both dates are in the lunar month Und-väp (Nov.-Dec.) in either the fifth or the twentieth (the text is not entirely clear) regnal year of king Siri San̆g-bo. The biruda Siri San̆g-bo was used by several Sri Lankan kings. Dating the inscription on palaeographic grounds to around the tenth century A.D., Wickremasinghe suggests that Siri San̆g-bo refers in this instance to either Sena II (r. 866-901 A.D.) or Kassapa IV (r. 912-929 A.D.), both of whom are known to have used the title. The palaeography more strongly supports the case for Kassapa IV but, of the two, only Sena II ruled for more than twenty years, making him the likelier possibility if the regnal year is interpreted as ‘twentieth’, rather than ‘fifth’.