This set of four copper plates are preserved in the Laṅkātilaka Temple at Udunuwara in Kandy District. These plates are dated in the seventh year of Rājāhirājasiṁha, who reigned from 1781 until 1798. The fourth plate is inscribed with grants of lands to the temple from this monarch and his predecessor, Kīrtiśrī Rājasiṁha (r. 1747–1781). The first three plates, meanwhile, are engraved with copies of earlier grants to the temple made by kings Bhuvanaikabāhu IV and Vikramabāhu III in the fourteenth century. These grants were originally recorded on a rock to the south of the temple (IN03212 and IN03213). However, there are some discrepancies between the rock inscriptions and the texts engraved on these plates. It cannot simply be the case that the engravers of the copper-plates struggled to decipher the original inscriptions, since the discrepancies affect portions of the text which remain clearly legible on the rock. Certain discrepancies appear to be the result of the eighteenth-century scribes having adapted the fourteenth-century text to match their notions of propriety and to magnify the part of Senā-Laṁkādhikāra in the grant to the temple. Furthermore, Senarath Paranavitana conjectures that the copper plates were not based directly on the rock inscriptions but were instead copied from earlier copper-plate charters, which contained variant versions of the texts. It certainly seems to have been the case that the grants proclaimed in the rock inscriptions were also recorded on copper plates, since the inscription of Bhuvanaikabāhu declares as much.

Metadata
Inscription ID IN03216
Title Laṅkātilaka Copper Plates
Alternative titles
Parent Object OB03172
Related Inscriptions IN03212 IN03213
Responsibility
Author Senarath Paranavitana
Print edition recorded by
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Digitally edited by
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Language සිංහල
Reigning monarch Rājāhirājasiṁha
Commissioner
Topic copies of the fourteenth-century rock-inscriptions of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV and Vikramabāhu III at the Laṅkātilaka temple, plus details of later grants to the same temple from Rājāhirājasiṁha and his predecessor, Kīrtiśrī Rājasiṁha
Date:
Min 1787
Max 1788
Comment The inscription is dated in the seventh year of Rājāhirājasiṁha, who reigned from 1781 until 1798.
Hand
Letter size
Description Letter size not reported.
Layout
Campus:
Width 39.37
Height 7.62
Description A set of four inscribed copper plates. The first three plates are inscribed on both sides, with nine lines per side; the fourth plate is engraved on one side only with eight lines.
Decoration
Bibliography
References Edited and translated in Paranavitana (1960): 1–45.
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