Kiri-Vehera Dagaba, Polonnaruwa
| Metadata | |
|---|---|
| Object ID | OB03070 |
| Title | Poḷonnaruva Kiri-Vehera Slab |
| Subtitle | |
| Inscription(s) | IN03090 |
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| Responsibility | |
| Author | Don Martino de Zilva Wickremasinghe |
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| Description | |
| Material | Stone / unspecified |
| Object Type | seat |
| Dimensions: | |
| Width | 304.8 |
| Height | 160.02 |
| Depth | |
| Weight | |
| Details | A quadrangular slab, probably once part of a raised stone seat. The slab has an ornamental border of swans (haṁsas) running in a single file from right to left along a fillet of foliaged creeper pattern. The border encloses a rectangular area of 9½ ft (289.56 cm) by 4½ ft (137.16), within which is another rectangle marked by a fillet border engraved with a conventional crab and fish pattern. The area between the outer border and the inner border is ruled with lines three inches apart and engraved with a three-line inscription, which runs around all four edges of the slab. Another inscription is written between ruled lines within the inner rectangle, leaving a blank space measuring 6 ft (182.88 cm) by 1 ft 3 in (38.1 cm) in the centre of the slab. This inner inscription has four lines. |
| History | |
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| Found: | |
| Date | |
| Place | Polonnaruwa |
| Other modern history | |
| Latest: | |
| Date | |
| Place | Polonnaruwa |
| Authority | Wickremasinghe, Don Martino de Zilva. (1912-27). ‘No. 26. Poḷonnaruva: Kiri-Vehera Slab-Inscription,’ Epigraphia Zeylanica 2, pp. 148-152. |
| Details | Recorded by Wickremasinghe as lying on the maḷuva or terrace of the so-called ‘Kiri-vehera’ dāgaba in Poḷonnaruva, about eight or ten yards to the south-east of its south altar. It is obvious from the contents of the two inscriptions on the slab and from the few stumps of pillars found nearby that it was originally situated inside a kūḍama or pavilion structure similar in style to the one at the Rankot-dāgaba (OB03067) and built about the same period, namely, between 1191 and 1196 A.D. The inscribed slab must have been the flagstone of a raised seat within the pavilion, from which the royalty was wont to worship the relics enshrined in the Kiri-vehera-dāgaba opposite. |
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