Language: සිංහල

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

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.

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This inscription is engraved on the rock outside the gate (vāhalkaḍa) to the west of the main shrine of Laṅkātilaka. It consists of four lines of writing, although the third and fourth lines are entirely illegible due to the weathered condition of the rock. The final line appears to end abruptly, suggesting that the engraving of the record was never completed. The first and second lines refer to the eighteenth year of Bhuvanaikabāhu. Senarath Paranavitana claimed that this must be a reference to Bhuvanaikabāhu V, since the reign of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV did not extent to eighteen years and, on palaeographic grounds, the inscription is cannot belong to any of other kings of that name. Bhuvanaikabāhu V’s reign began in 1371–1372 A.D., hence the present inscription dates from 1389–1390 A.D. The second line of the inscription refers to the vihara and the devālas but, due to the fragmentary nature of the document, the purpose of the record is not clear.

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. An inscription of forty-six lines in Tamil (IN03214) is engraved on the lower stretch of the rock. The upper stretch contains two Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other. The top record is dated in the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV of Gaṁpaḷa (IN03212) and the bottom record is from the reign of his successor, Vikramabāhu III. The second of these two records is dealt with here. It registers the granting of two villages – Paṭṭiyegama and Rabbogamu – to the monastery at Laṅkātilaka by the king and his Äpā (heir-apparent). The inscription is dated on the tenth day of the waxing moon in the month of Unduvap in the third year of the king’s reign. Vikramabāhu III reigned from 1357 to 1374, making the date of this inscription November-December 1359. Another version of the present inscription is engraved on a set of copper plates preserved inside the Laṅkātilaka temple (IN03216).

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.

This inscription is engraved on a rock situated in a stretch of paddy-fields in the village of Nugaliyadda in Pāta Hēvāhäṭa, Kandy District, and about a quarter of a mile to the south of the well-known Sagama temple, a shrine dating from Kandyan times. The record was first published by H. C. P. Bell in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 22 (1910), pp. 364–365. It is dated in the ninth year of Bhuvanaikabāhu. On the basis of the palaeography, which dates the inscription to the fourteenth century, this king could be either Bhuvanaikabāhu IV or V. However, as the document registers a grand by the Minister Aḷakeśvara, a dignitary who did not come into prominence until after Bhuvanaikabāhu IV’s death, it is clear that the king in question must be the later monarch. Bhuvanaikabāhu V’s reign began in 1371–1372 A.D., hence the present inscription can be dated to 1380–1381 A.D. The language of the record, which is Sinhalese with some Sanskrit tatsama forms, is very ornate in style, the author having used simile, metaphors and, at one point, the highly artificial figure of speech called the śleṣa (double entendre). The inscription registers a donation of lands in the village of Saputala in Sagama by the two brothers Aḷakeśvara and Devamantrīśvara to the god Nātha of Senkaḍagala and the god of the Nā tree of unspecified location, in gratitude to these deities for having crowned with success the efforts of the two dignitaries to place the affairs of the Church and the State in a stable condition. The village of Saputala, where the lands granted were situated, is modern Haputalē, which adjoins to the north and west the stretch of paddy fields where the record was found. The donors, Aḷakeśvara and Devamantrīśvara, are described in terms indicating that they were second in importance only to the king. They can be identified with the two brothers Aḷakeśvara or Aḷagakkonāra and Dev-himi, who are eulogised in very high terms in the Mayūra-sandeśa, a Sinhalese poem composed in the reign of Bhuvanaikabāhu V. H. C. P. Bell identified the Aḷakeśvara of the present inscription with Vīra Aḷakeśvara, who wielded power on two occasions in the troubled period prior to the accession of Parākramabāhu VI (as recorded in an oft-quoted passage in the Saddharmaratnākara). However, Senarath Paranavitana offered an alternative interpretation, arguing that the Aḷakeśvara mentioned here was in fact Vīra Aḷakeśvara’s uncle, a minister who rose to fame in the reign of Vikramabāhu III and, under the title of prabhurāja, became the virtual dictator of the Sinhalese country.