Language: संस्कृतम्

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This inscription is one of three lengthy epigraphs engraved on the rock to the south of the Buddhist shrine of Laṅkātilaka in the village of Rabbēgomuwa in Uḍunuvara, Kandy District. Two extensive areas on the surface of the rock are covered with deeply and carefully engraved writing. The upper stretch contains two Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other: the first of these records is dealt with here and features thirty-three lines, dated in the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV of Gaṁpaḷa; the second consists of seven lines from the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV’s successor, Vikramabāhu III (IN03213). Meanwhile, an inscription of forty-six lines in Tamil (IN03214) is engraved on the lower stretch of the rock. Another version of the present inscription is engraved on a set of copper plates preserved inside the Laṅkātilaka temple (IN03216).

The present inscription is dated in Śaka 1266, being the third year of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV. This date is equivalent to 1343–1344 A.D. The contents of the inscription consist of a fairly detailed account of the founding of the Laṅkātilaka shrine, mainly due to the efforts of Senālaṅkādhikāra. This is followed by a list of lands and other donations made to the shrine by the king, Senālaṅkādhikāra and other notables of the period. It ends with imprecations against those who would hinder the continuance of the grant, and exhortations made by the minister to kings and minsters of the present and the future for the maintenance of the shrine. The exhortations are embodied in two Sanskrit stanzas with an expanded paraphrase in Sinhalese. The same stanzas also feature in the Tamil inscription on the same rock (IN03214) and the second is included in the rock inscription at Alavaḷa-amuṇa (IN03217), which registers further grants to the Laṅkātilaka shrine. This would seem to suggest that these stanzas were not specially composed for the present inscription but were instead standard forms for expressing such sentiments in this period.

Ambasthala Dagoba, Mihintale

This inscription is engraved on the perpendicular face of a rock situated about 40 or 50 yards (35 or 45 m) to the north-east of the Ambastala Dāgäba at Mihintaḷē. The epigraph has been seriously damaged by the action of the weather and possibly also by the destructive attentions of vandals, to the extent that large portions of the writing are now totally effaced and many letters are not very clear. However, with help from Sylvain Lévi, Senarath Paranavitana identified part of the inscription as a copy of the Trikāyastava, a Sanskrit hymn consisting of three Sragdharāverses adoring the three bodies of the Buddha and a fourth verse in the same metre embodying the wish of the reciter. Lévi published a version of the Trikāyastava, restored to Sanskrit from a Chinese transliteration, in 1896, and another version was published by Baron A. von Staël-Holstein from a Tibetan codex in 1911. Neither version was perfect: the Tibetan version was missing the fourth verse and, although the Chinese version was complete, Lévi was unable to recognise certain words due to the fact that the Chinese alphabet does not allow for precise transliteration of Sanskrit. Nonetheless, using these two version together, Paranavitana was able to read the Trikāyastava in the Mihintaḷē inscription, filling in those portions which are missing on the stone. The Trikāyastava starts towards the close of the sixteenth line of the inscription and is continued over the next two and three-quarter lines. The first sixteen lines of the inscription also appear to be in Sanskrit verse and may include other religious hymns. However, the inscription’s poor state of preservation means that none of these verses can be deciphered. Equally difficult to make out are the final lines of the inscription, which contain some verses in the śloka metre. These verses appear to give an account of the person who had the epigraph engraved on the stone and his religious aspirations in doing this meritorious act. His name is not preserved but he seems to have been a monk.

Nītupatpāṇa Vihara (also known Girihandu Seya), Tiriyāy, Trincomalee

This inscription is engraved on a rock situated about 200 feet (60.96 m) to the south of the vaṭadāgē at the ancient Buddhist monastery now called Nītupatpāṇa (also known Girihandu Seya) near the village of Tiriyāy (Thiriyai). This monastery stands at the summit of a hill, known by the Tamil name of Kandasāmimalai (the Hill of the Lord Skanda), about a mile to the west of the village, which is located near the sea-coast, roughly twenty-nine miles to the north of Trincomalee in the Eastern Province. The inscription was discovered in 1931, as reported in the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon Annual Report for 1931–32 (pt. IV – Education, Science and Art [J], p. 19). It can be dated on palaeographic grounds to the late seventh or first half of the eighth century A.D. and is written in Sanskrit. As B. Ch. Chhabra (1934–41: 312) has shown, the inscription is in verse, the composer having employed the Nardaṭaka metre in the first ten stanzas and the Upajāti metre in the eleventh and final stanza. The engraver has allotted one line to each stanza.

The record begins with an account of some sea-faring merchants, before launching into a long eulogy of a shrine named Girikaṇḍi-caitya. The eulogy is followed by the pious wish of the author that, by the merit he has gained by praising the shrine, the world may be freed from the miseries of existence; this wish identifies the author as a Mahāyānist, something which can perhaps also be inferred from the fact that the document is written in Sanskrit. The next portion of the inscription states that Girikaṇḍi-caitya was founded by two groups of merchants. The record ends with the Buddhist formula about the transitory nature of mundane things.

Paranavitana (1934–41: 151–160) read the names of the groups of merchants who are stated in the inscription to have built the Girikaṇḍi-caitya as Trapussaka and Vallika, which he took to be corruptions of Trapuṣa (Tapussa in Pāli) and Bhallika (Bhalluka in the Nidānakathā), two merchants who offered food to the Buddha immediately after his enlightenment and were the recipients of some his hair. This led Paranavitana to conclude that the Girikaṇḍi-caitya at Tiriyāy was founded by these merchants to enshrine the hair-relics, although B. Ch. Chhabra (1934–41: 313–314) has challenged this interpretation (see Misc. Notes for discussion).

This inscription is cut into the rock at the Gaḍalādeṇiya Vihārē, a fourteenth-century Buddhist shrine situated in Pilimathalawa, near Kandy. Rock-cut steps lead up the north-eastern side of the rock to reach the shrine. A number of inscriptions (including IN03154) are engraved, one above the other, to the right of the steps as one ascends. The present inscription is the earliest and also the longest of these inscriptions, covering more than half of the inscribed rock-surface. It is dated on the full-moon day of the month of Vesaga (Skt. Vaiśākha) in the third year of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV and also mentions the Śaka year 1266, expired. The part of the sentence which contains the date was interpreted by H. C. P. Bell (Report on the Kǟgalla District, p. 92, n. 1) and H. W. Codrington (A Short History of Ceylon, p. 88) to mean that the Śaka year given is the same as the year of accession of Bhuvanaikabāhu. However, Senarath Paranavitana argued that the sentence in fact indicated that the Śaka year in question was equivalent to the third year of the king. Hence the date of the inscription can be understood as the full-moon day of the month of Vesaga in Śaka 1266, which is equivalent to Wednesday 28 April 1344 A.D. The inscription is written in Sinhalese, except for the first line, which contains a Sanskrit śloka in the Indravajrā metre. The text records the foundation of the Buddhist shrine Gaḍalādeṇiya by the great sthavira Dharmmakīrtti. An account of the building of the temple, which comprises more than one-third of the record, is followed by a long list of lands dedicated to it by various personages. The inscription also gives certain details about the architectural features of the shrine and the images and paintings with which it was adorned. The shrine is said to have three storeys, the author of the inscription having apparently counted the terraced roof of the ardha-maṇḍapa and antarāla as the second storey and a cell on a higher level in the vimāna as the topmost storey. The name of the architect who designed the building is given as Gaṇeśvarācāri, which suggests that he was from South India, a supposition supported by the style of the architecture.