Ruwanwelisaya, Anuradhapura
Ruanweli Dagoba, c. 1891. Image from: Ricalton, James, (1891). ‘The City of the Sacred Bo-Tree (Anuradhapura),’ Scribner’s Magazine 10, pp. 319–336, image opposite p. 328.
| Metadata | |
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| Object ID | OB03163 |
| Title | Ruvanvälisǟya Slab of Queen Kalyāṇavatī |
| Subtitle | |
| Inscription(s) | IN03204 |
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| Responsibility | |
| Author | Senarath Paranavitana |
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| Description | |
| Material | Stone / unspecified |
| Object Type | Stone slab |
| Dimensions: | |
| Width | 388.62 cm |
| Height | 264.16 cm |
| Depth | |
| Weight | |
| Details | A stone slab engraved on one side with an inscription and set into the pavement of the Ruvanvälisǟya at Anurādhapura. The writing is enclosed within a linear framing on the top and the two sides. Lines 1 to 14 are separated from one another by horizontal lines and it was obviously the original intention for such lines to appear between the remaining lines as well, since the beginnings of lines can be seen below lines 15 and 16. Although the inscription was apparently in relatively good state of preservation when it was discovered for scholarship in the nineteenth century, it has since suffered considerable damage, largely as a result of carts having been driven over the slab during the restoration of the dāgäba. |
| History | |
| Created: | |
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| Other ancient history | |
| Found: | |
| Date | before 1882 |
| Place | Ruwanweli Dagoba |
| Other modern history | |
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| Date | |
| Place | Ruwanweli Dagoba |
| Authority | Paranavitana, S. (1934–41). ‘No. 33. The Ruvanvälisǟya Slab-Inscription of Queen Kalyāṇavatī,’ Epigraphia Zeylanica 4, pp. 253–260. |
| Details | The slab is set into the pavement of the Ruvanvälisǟya at Anurādhapura in close proximity to its southern vāhalkaḍa. A short donative records that it was placed here in the ninth century. Before that, it seems to have served as the landing above a flight of steps in some old building. Writing in the fourth volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica in 1939 (p. 253), Senarath Paranavitana commented that the slab’s inscription had first been brought to scholarly attention “over fifty years ago”. The first scholarly accounts of the inscription appeared in the early 1880s (see Gunasekara 1882: 181–186, no. 1, and Müller 1883: 69–70, 105–106, 137–138, no. 158). |
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