This inscription is engraved on a rock near the ruined stupa at a place called Veherakema in the heart of a dense forest, about six miles to the south-east of Lahugala in the Pānama Pattu of the Batticaloa District. It can be assigned on palaeographic grounds to around the seventh century A.D. and records that a ruler named Vahaka Maharaja caused a caitya to be built at the Macaḷa-vehera, which was presumably the name of the ancient monastery at this site. From his adoption of the title maharaja, it is clear that Vahaka was an independent ruler but Paranavitana could find no reference to a king of this name in the chronicles. He was perhaps a prince who, in the unsettled political conditions which prevailed in Anurādhapura during the greater part of the seventh century, set himself up as an independent sovereign of Rohaṇa, within which principality the inscription lies.
Edited and translated by Senarath Paranavitana in Epigraphia Zeylanica 4 (1934–41): 142–143, no. 17, I.
Epigraphia Zeylanica 4 (1934–41) 142–143, no. 17, I