Language: සිංහල

The inscription is engraved at the bottom of the rock-cut steps on the south-western side of Devanagala, a rock situated about three miles to the south-east of Māvanälla in the Galboḍa Kōraḷē of the Kǟgalla District. These steps lead to the summit of the rock, upon which are the ruins of a massive stone building called Paraṇa Vihāra, an old dāgäba, and an image house of Kandyan style. The inscription was first noticed by Edward Müller in his Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon (1883: 60, 87, 120, no. 135), although he did not recognise the text’s historical significance, which was subsequently highlighted by H. C. P. Bell in his Report on the Kegalla District of the Province of Sabaragamuwa (1904: 73–76).

The inscription is dated to the twelfth year of Parākramabāhu I. This king ascended to the throne in 1153 A.D., hence the inscription must have been engraved in 1164–1165 A.D. It registers a grant of certain lands by the king to the general Kit Nuvaragal (Kitti Nagaragiri) in recognition of the latter’s services in an expedition against the Rāmañña country in the Pagan kingdom (modern-day Burma/Myanmar). The inscription provides valuable information about this expedition. It indicates that the campaign took place in or shortly before the twelfth year of Parākramabāhu’s reign and enables us to identify the Pagan monarch at the time of the conflict Alaungsithu (r. 1112–1167 A.D.). These details are not mentioned in the account of the expedition in the Mahāvaṁsa. Alaungsithu is referred to in the inscription as ‘Bhuvanāditta’, a title which, although applied to several Pagan kings, was particularly associated with him.

The inscription is engraved on all four faces of an irregularly shaped stone slab, which was discovered in April 1931 in a garden called Baṭatum̆bagahavatta in the village of Velmilla (Welmilla) in the Rayigam Kōraḷē of the Kalutara District. According to local tradition, the villagers long ago dug a large pit near the stone in the hope of finding buried treasure. Finding none, they buried the stone in the pit, where it remained until it was brought to the surface in the 1920s. The slab was broken in two before it was buried and it has since been further mutilated into four unequal parts, one of which is now missing. After visiting the village, Senarath Paranavitana felt that the inscription was of exceptional interest and had it removed to the Colombo Museum in order to preserve it from further damage.

The inscription is dated in the eighth year of king Mahasen Abhā (Mahāsena Abhaya) who, on palaeographic grounds, must be one of the three Senas who flourished in the tenth century. The regnal year precludes Sena IV, whose reign lasted for only three years, and the mention of the heir-apparent Udā (Udaya), son of Sirisaṅgboyi Kasub (Kassapa), rules out Sena V as, although named Udaya, the heir-apparent during his reign was a son of Mahinda IV. By process of elimination, the inscription may therefore by attributed to Sena III, whose reign according to the chronicles extended for nine years and whose mahapā (heir-apparent) was a prince named Udaya. The chronicles do not record this prince’s parentage but the present inscription suggests that his father was Kassapa IV, who was known by the title of Sirisaṅgbo and whose reign was close to that of Udaya III.

The purpose of the inscription was to grant the usual type of immunities to a pamuṇu land situated in Aruṅgam-peḷavaga and belonging to a person whose name is not completely preserved. It may of interest to note that there is a village called Aruggoḍa about four miles from the site where this inscription was found, which may be related to the place called Aruṅgam-peḷavaga in the record.

The inscription is engraved on one side of a pillar found at the Vaṭa-dā-gē at Poḷonnaruva, where it had been installed in the pavement. It was recorded as No. 55 in the list of inscriptions examined between 1901 and 1905 in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1905 (p. 40). The pillar was subsequently removed to the Archaeological Museum at Anurādhapura. A portion of the inscription was obliterated at some point in the past, possibly when the pillar was used as a paving slab. Twelve lines remain legible, from which it seems that the inscription was a grant of immunities to a village named Muhundehi-gama. Fortunately, the surviving lines also include the date of the inscription, which is given as the fifteenth year of a king styled Abhā Salamevan. Bell, however, misread this date as the forty-fifth year of Abhā Salamevan. This caused some puzzlement because, although the inscription may be dated to the nine century A.D. on palaeographic grounds, no king is recorded in the historical chronicles of Sri Lanka as having reigned for more than forty years at any time between the fourth and eleventh centuries A.D. As a consequence, this inscription was sometimes cited as evidence that the chronicles do not provide a reliable source for the lengths of royal reigns in medieval Sri Lanka, until Senarath Paranavitana corrected Bell’s mistake in the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 290).  Paranavitana also concluded that the king mentioned in the inscription was probably Sena I, who is known to have used the viruda title Abhā Salamevan.

The inscription is engraved on the rough surface of a short pillar slab found in the village of Kivulekada, one and a half miles from Ayitigevewa in North-Central Province. The inscription was first recorded by H. C. P. Bell in 1892. The local Arachchi informed Bell that he had discovered the inscription when he had the slab dug out of the ground for use as a support in his aṭuva (granary). In 1928, Senarath Paranavitana visited the village and found the pillar lying, half-buried, on the ground with the inscribed face downwards, near the spill of the Kuḍā Kivulēkaḍa by the side of the footpath leading to the village of Maha Kivulēkaḍa.

The inscription records a grant of immunities but, curiously, does not name the land to which the grant pertains. It refers to a king named Salamevan, who is described as ‘the founder of the Riṭigal monastery’. The Mahāvaṁsa mentions Riṭigala by the name of Ariṭṭha-pabbata and states that a monastery was ‘erected as if by magic’ on the Ariṭṭha mountain by king Sena I, who is known to have used the viruda title of Salamevan. On these grounds, Bell identified the king mentioned in the present inscription with Sena I, who reigned from around 846 until 866 A.D. No regnal year is given but Paranavitana suggests that the text may date from the latter years of his reign, since the record clearly postdates the king’s building of the Riṭigala monastery, which – according to the Mahāvaṁsa – took place after the Pāṇḍyan raid.

The inscription is engraved on two sides of a stone pillar, which was found, sometime between 1906 and 1912, in a chena near the Malvatu Oya, to the east of the fifth milestone on the Outer Circular Road in Anurādhapura. It was recorded as No. 2 in the list of inscriptions forming Appendix F of the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1911–12 and subsequently moved to the Anurādhapura Museum. The pillar was evidently taken from the ruins of an earlier building. The lower portion of the pillar has been broken off and, at its top, there is a mortise hole to which a wooden capital was probably fitted. The inscription records the grant of a land named Kavuḍāvatta to a pirivena constructed by the heir-apparent (Māpā) Bhuvanaikabāhu, son of Vijayabāhu. The only Bhuvanaikabāhu mentioned in the chronicles as a son of Vijayabāhu is the prince of that name who was the second son of Vijayabāhu III. This prince held the office of yuvarāja, which is very often synonymous with māpā, in the reign of his elder brother, Parākramabāhu II. Hence this record may be attributed to the latter’s reign, which lasted from 1234 until 1269 A.D.