This inscription is engraved on a stone slab found to the left of the flight of steps at the entrance to a ruined structure on the site of an ancient monastery situated in the Pānama Pattu of the Batticaloa District, about a mile to the south of the eighth mile-stone on the road from Potuvil to Vällavāya. The ancient name of this monastery was Rūṇu-maha-vehera; it is now known as Magul-maha-vihāra. The present inscription can be dated, on palaeographic grounds, to the fourteenth century. It is written as a palimpsest over a long tenth-century inscription which has thus been obliterated, save for thirteen lines at the end. The later inscription records that Rūṇu-maha-vehera, the ancient monastery at the site, was completely renovated by Vihāra-mahā-devī, the consort of the two brother kings named Pärakumbā, after it had fallen into ruin and that she endowed it with lands for its maintenance. Since these brothers are described in this inscription as ruling over Rohaṇa, it seems likely that they were local princes whose authority was confined to this region, rather than paramount sovereigns of Sri Lanka.
In 1929, Senarath Paranavitana compiled a tentative account of the inscription, based on a defective estampage, for inclusion in the Ceylon Journal of Science, Section G, vol. ii, part II (p. 106). A few years later, he published a more detailed and accurate account of the inscription, including an edition and a translation, in Epigraphia Zeylanica 4 (1934–41): 161–169, no. 19, I.
Epigraphia Zeylanica 4 (1934–41) 161–169, no. 19, I