IN03168 Nāgirikanda Rock Inscription of Kumāradāsa

The inscription is engraved on a rock at Nāgirikanda, situated in the Kadavat Kōraḷē of the North-Century Province. This site was the location of an ancient Buddhist monastery, although most vestiges of this ancient foundation were destroyed or obscured by when a new shrine was constructed on the same spot during the Kandyan period. Two inscriptions, both of them engraved on rocks, have been discovered at this place. The earlier one is a short record of three lines, which can be assigned on palaeographic grounds to about the fourth century A.D. The other inscription, which is later and longer, is dealt with here. It was first published in a scholarly context by Edward Müller in his Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon (1883: 51, 77 and 111, no. 97b) and later featured in the list of inscriptions in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1890 (p. 9). The inscription was recopied in 1894 under the direction of H. C. P. Bell and again in 1928 by Senarath Paranavitana, who went on to produce an improved edition and translation of the text for the fourth volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (pp. 115–128, no. 14). The script of this inscription is of considerable importance, since it represents the transitional stage between Brāhmī and the medieval Sinhalese. The record dates from the sixth century and registers the gift of some tanks and paddy fields to the ancient monastery on the site of the inscription, which was called Bamaṇagiriya, by a king whose name appears to be Maha-Kumaratasa, although that part of the text is quite worn. Paranavitana identified this monarch with the king called Kumāra-Dhātusena in the Mahāvaṁsa and Kumāradāsa in the Pujāvalī and subsequent Sinhalese chronicles. There is some uncertainty around the exact date of this king’s accession to the throne with Geiger, Wijesinghe and Wickremasinghe placing this event in 513, 515 and 570 A.D. respectively.