Language: Pāli

Inscribed stone pillar from Myazedi pagoda, Myinkaba, Pagan. Now in Bagan Archaeological Museum.

PYU7 Stone pillar inscription from Myazedi pagoda, Myinkaba, Pagan.

Lankatilaka Vihara, Polonnaruwa

The inscription was discovered on the inner face of the left guard stone of the east entrance to one of the buildings in the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra in Poḷonnaruva. The discovery was noted by H. C. P. Bell in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1910–1911. Although bad weathering has rendered the middle lines of the inscription unreadable, the rest of the text is perfectly legible. The inscription consists of seventeen lines in Pāli. The composition is metrical, the whole text being framed in two gāthās. The first half of the first gāthā records that king Parakkama-Bāhu I (r. 1153–1186 A.D.) built the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra; the other half is illegible but seems to deal with some repair works to a wall of the aforementioned temple. The second gāthā tells us that the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra fell into a state of disrepair for one hundred years until king Vijaya-Bāhu IV (r. 1270–1272 A.D.) had it completely rebuilt. The Mahāvaṁsa confirms that the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra was built by Parakkama-Bāhu I. It further notes that, towards the end of the reign of his father Parakkama-Bāhu II (r. 1236–1269 A.D.), the future Vijaya-Bāhu IV made extensive repairs to temples and shrines in Poḷonnaruva. Taking this evidence together with the text of the guard-stone inscription, it is clear that the Laṅkātilaka was one of the structures repaired during this campaign of restoration. However, Wickremasinghe was unable to determine whether Vijaya-Bāhu IV had had the inscription engraved on an existing guard-stone which was already in situ or whether the text had been incised on a new stone added to the temple entrance during the repair works.

Potgul Vehera, Polonnaruwa

The inscription is incised on a door-jamb of the ruined maṇḍapa at the so-called ‘Pot-Gul Vehera’, which is the central shrine in a group of ruined buildings erected on raised sites within a quadrangular mound once held up by a brick rampart faced with elephant head decorations. The site is situated about a mile to the south of the ancient city of Poḷonnaruva, not far from the southern end of the Tōpa-väva bund. Little is known about the original use of the shrine but the modern name – ‘Pot-Gul Vehera’ (‘library shrine’) – may be a misnomer, since there is no clear evidence that it was used as a monastic library. The building was excavated in 1906 by H. C. P. Bell.

The inscription records the original construction of the vihāra by king Parakkrama-Bāhu I (r. 1153-86), its rebuilding after his death by his chief-queen Līlāvatī, and the addition of the maṇḍapa by his sub-queen Candavatī. Līlāvatī’s rebuilding is described as having taken place after she had been installed as sovereign in her own right. The rebuilding can therefore have taken place no earlier than 1197, the year in which she first took the throne. She was deposed in 1200 but returned to power on two further occasions, reigning from 1209-1210 and again from 1211-12. It is clear from the inscription that the construction of the maṇḍapa by Candavatī occurred after Līlāvatī’s rebuilding (and thus no earlier than 1197). Since the inscription is written on a door jamb of the maṇḍapa, the text may have been commissioned by Candavatī’s order. Wickremasinghe and Bell identify Candavatī with the queen referred to as Rūpavatī in other sources.

The inscription is engraved on a copper plate, which was found in 1893 at the ruins of what was then believed to be the Abhayagiri Vihāra in Anuradhapura. This vihāra has since been correctly identified as the Jetavana vihāra. The text of the copper-plate inscription is written in the Nāgāri script. It was first edited in the first volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 40) by Wickremasinghe, who believed the language of the inscription to be mixed Sanskrit. However, Paranavitana recognised that the text was actually in Pāli and published a revised in the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 170). As Paranavitana noted, apart from one or two clerical errors, the verse is identical with the verse of the Vaṭṭaka Jātaka. The plate was the votive offering of a Buddhist pilgrim. However, it is not known whether the pilgrim was from North India or a Sri Lankan devotee who was acquainted with the Nāgāri script. Although this script is used in a number of other inscriptions from Sri Lanka, including some stone records, many clay votive tablets and certain coin legends from the tenth century, this copper plate is an unusual – and perhaps unique – example of the script being used for the Pāli language in medieval times. The peculiar formation of some of the letters was probably due to the scribe being somewhat unfamiliar with script, while the orthographical errors in the inscription may be due to the fact that the script was not generally used to write in Pāli.

The verse was uttered by the Bodhisattva, then born as a quail, when the jungle fire was advancing to swallow him, and when his father and mother had fled. As soon as the verse was uttered, the progress of the fire was checked and the surrounding area was rendered immune from fire for a whole aeon. The incident is counted as one of the five great miracles of the Bodhisattva’s career. It is therefore easy to understand that this stanza should have been considered a fitting subject to be engraved on copper and used as a votive offering. It may also have been used as a charm against fire.