Object type: Pillar

The inscription was found at Noccipotāna, about one and a half miles from Galegama in Egoḍapattuva in the Tamankaḍuva district, some sixty miles south-east of Anurādhapura. It consists of 46 lines in the Sinhalese alphabet of 10^th century A.D. engraved on three sides of a stone pillar. The inscription records a grant of immunities to the village of Mun̆uneḷuva-gama and is dated to the ninth year of the reign of Abhā Salamevan. It is therefore seven years later than the Kirigallǟva inscription of the same king (IN03065). Wickremasinghe suggests that the biruda Abhā Salamevan refers in this instance to Udaya I.

The inscription is engraved on the four sides of a stone pillar discovered by Bell in 1892. The pillar was found in Kirigallǟva, a hamlet in Kaḍawat Kōrale, about twenty miles north-north-east of Anuradhapura. The inscription consists of 57 lines of writing in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th century A.D. It records the granting of immunities to a village called Itnaru-gama in Angam-kuḷiya (a district in the Northern Quarter) by decree of His Majesty Abhā Salamevan in the second year of his reign. Wickremasinghe suggests that the biruda Abhā Salamevan refers in this instance to Udaya I, who reigned from 901 to 912 A.D.

The pillar was first discovered sometime in or before 1886 by H. Parker in the forest below the embankment of the Padaviya Tank “at the site of an ancient town which is now called Moragoḍa”. It was still there, “lying prone among the ruins”, when Bell and Wickremasinghe visited the spot in October 1891. The pillar is inscribed on all four sides in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th century A.D. The inscription is dated in the sixteenth year of reign of king Kasub Sirisaṅgbo, identified as Kassapa IV (r. 912-929 A.D.) It proclaims the grant of certain immunities to lands irrigated by the waters of the Padonnaru tank.

The inscribed stone pillar was discovered by Wickremasinghe and Bell in 1891 in Buddhannehäla (Buddhanagehela) in Kun͂chuṭṭu Kōrale, North-Central Province, about seven miles north of the ruins of Padaviya. Five caves and one dāgaba were found in Buddhannehäla and the present inscription was discovered in Cave No. 3. The pillar was placed upside down to serve as a door-jamb of a Śaiva shrine of about the eleventh or early twelfth century A.D. and was evidently brought there from elsewhere. Written in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th century A.D., the inscription covers the four sides of the pillar. On the first side, the inscription is surmounted by a large śrī and, above that, an emblem of the sun or a lotus. On the fourth side, a crow and a dog are cut underneath the inscription to indicate that whosoever transgresses the rules enjoined shall be born in the future as these animals. The inscription records regulations concerning the management of lands (fields, water, employees, cattle, sowing). Its use of the expression abhiṣekayen daru (‘son by sacred sprinkling’) indicates the prevalence of certain Brahmaṇic or more likely northern Buddhist (Mahāyāna) rites not sanctioned in the southern Buddhist Church. The inscription is dated in the third year of the reign of His Majesty Abhā Salamevan. This name (biruda) was used by a number of Sri Lankan monarchs. It may refer in this instance to Kassapa V (r. 929-939).

The inscription is written over four sides of a quadrangular pillar. The pillar was found by H. C. P. Bell in 1891 in the village of Ram̆bǟva on the right bank of the Yōda-äla canal, about 3 miles north-east of Īripinniyǟva. The inscription is written in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th century A.D. and deals with the granting of immunities in respect of certain lands dedicated to the Sen-Senevirad-pirivena. It is dated to the [lunar month] Hil (Oct.-Nov.) in the first year of the reign of Abhaya Salamevan. The text is almost identical to that of the Īripinniyǟva pillar inscription (IN03054), which was granted five weeks later by the same king. Only the names of the lands being dealt with and one or two clauses are different. Abhaya Salamevan is a name (biruda) used by several kings. In this inscription, it probably refers to one of the two kings who reigned between Sēna II and Kassapa V, namely Udaya I and Kassapa IV.