Lankatilaka Vihara, Polonnaruwa
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| Object ID | OB03086 |
| Title | Poḷonnaruva Laṅkātilaka Inscribed Guard-Stone |
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| Inscription(s) | IN03106 |
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| Responsibility | |
| Author | Don Martino de Zilva Wickremasinghe |
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| Description | |
| Material | Stone / unspecified |
| Object Type | guard stone |
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| Details | Dimensions not reported. The left guard stone of the east entrance to one of the buildings in the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra in Poḷonnaruva. The guard stone bears an inscription on its inner face. |
| History | |
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| Found: | |
| Date | in or before 1910 or 1911 |
| Place | Polonnaruwa |
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| Latest: | |
| Date | |
| Place | Polonnaruwa |
| Authority | Wickremasinghe, Don Martino de Zilva. (1928-33). ‘No. 2. (Reg. No. 4.) Poḷonnaruva: Laṅkātilaka Guard-Stone Inscription of Vijaya-Bāhu IV (1270–1272 A.D.),’ Epigraphia Zeylanica 3, pp. 48-50. |
| Details | The discovery of this inscribed stone was noted by H. C. P. Bell in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1910–1911. Laṅkātilaka was built by king Parakkama-Bāhu I (r. 1153–1186 A.D.) and repaired by king Vijaya-Bāhu IV (r. 1270–1272 A.D.). The inscription commemorates Vijaya-Bāhu’s repairs but Wickremasinghe was unable to determine whether this king 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 rebuilding works. Writing in the late 1920s, Wickremasinghe refers to the site of the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra as Jetavanārāma, the name by which it was apparently known in the early twentieth century; the site is labelled as such on the Archaeological Commissioner’s Office Plan of Poḷonnaruwa (1903; republished in Epigraphia Zeylanica 2 [1912-27], opposite p. 84). |
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