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Reportedly discovered – along with other minor antiquities – beneath the foundation of an ancient structure on the lank belonging to the Viṣṇu temple at Vallipuram, a village in the Vaḍamaracci division of the Jaffna District, in or about 1936. Senarath Paranavitana published the first scholarly account of the plate in 1939 (Epigraphia Zeylanica 4, pp. 229–237). However, his reading of the text proved immensely controversial and the plate was drawn into the ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Although it was thought at one time to be untraceable, sparking rumours that it might have been a forgery, the plate resurfaced in the possession of the monk and scholar Walpola Rahula. A copy was presented to President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1991, who exploited the plate for political purposes, claiming the inscription as evidence that the Sinhalese had historically ruled Vallipuram and the surrounding area (Schalk 1996). The plate is now in the collection at the National Museum in Colombo.
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