The inscription is engraved on two sides of a stone pillar, which was found, sometime between 1906 and 1912, in a chena near the Malvatu Oya, to the east of the fifth milestone on the Outer Circular Road in Anurādhapura. It was recorded as No. 2 in the list of inscriptions forming Appendix F of the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1911–12 and subsequently moved to the Anurādhapura Museum. The pillar was evidently taken from the ruins of an earlier building. The lower portion of the pillar has been broken off and, at its top, there is a mortise hole to which a wooden capital was probably fitted. The inscription records the grant of a land named Kavuḍāvatta to a pirivena constructed by the heir-apparent (Māpā) Bhuvanaikabāhu, son of Vijayabāhu. The only Bhuvanaikabāhu mentioned in the chronicles as a son of Vijayabāhu is the prince of that name who was the second son of Vijayabāhu III. This prince held the office of yuvarāja, which is very often synonymous with māpā, in the reign of his elder brother, Parākramabāhu II. Hence this record may be attributed to the latter’s reign, which lasted from 1234 until 1269 A.D.

Epigraphia Zeylanica
Paranavitana, S. (1928-33). ‘No. 30. A Pillar Inscription of Bhuvanaikabāhu Mahapā from Anurādhapura,’ Epigraphia Zeylanica 3, p. 288.

[This] is the stone inscription set up in order to [proclaim] that the area belonging to this Kavuḍavatta was granted by His Highness Śrī Bhuvanaikabāhu Mahapā, the son of . . . (ha)ḷa Vijayabāhu, to the pirivena constructed in the name of His Highness.

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