Object type: Stone slab

The inscription is engraved on a stone slab discovered in 1911 by H. F. Tomalin, the Provincial Engineer at Galle, in a culvert near the turn to Cripps Road within that town and afterwards moved to the Colombo Museum. The slab features inscriptions in three different languages, enclosed within a floral border: Tamil (top-left), Persian (bottom-left, IN0351) and Chinese (right, IN0352). The Tamil inscription is dealt with here.

Following the discovery of the slab, the Chinese inscription was successfully transcribed and translated by Edmund Backhouse. However, Rao Bahadur H. Krishna Sastri (Assistant Superintendent for Epigraphy, Madras) and J. Horrovitz (Epigraphist for Moslem Inscriptions in India) failed in their efforts to decipher the Tamil and Persian texts respectively. Sometime later, the Tamil inscription was transcribed and translated for the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (1933: 331–341) by Senarath Paranativana, who benefitted from having access to Backhouse’s translation of the Chinese text.

Like the Chinese inscription, the Tamil inscription is dated in the second month of the seventh year of Yuṅlo (Yung Lo), the Chinese emperor whose reign began in 1403 A.D. The text tells us that the Chinese emperor, having heard of the fame of the god Tenavarai-nāyaṉār in Sri Lanka, sent to him, through his envoys Ciṅvo and Uviṅcuviṅ, various kinds of offerings, of which a detailed list is given. Paranavitana notes that Tenavarai is the Tamil name for Devundara (Devunuvara), a settlement near Matara on the southern coast of Sri Lanka which was the centre of a cult dedicated to a deity known as Uppalavaṇṇa. Sometimes like the Purāṇic Viṣṇy in the Hindu tradition, this god was sometimes styled in Sinhalese ‘Devundara Deviyo’, which can be rendered in Tamil as ‘Tenavarai-nāyaṉār’. The other two inscriptions on the slab feature similar (though not identical) lists of offerings but the beneficiary is different in each case, being the Buddha in the Chinese text and an Islamic shrine or saint in the Persian. It therefore appears that, when the Chinese gained political ascendancy over Sri Lanka in 1409, they made gifts of equal value to several different religious traditions of the region and recorded these gifts on the same stone.

The inscription is engraved on all four faces of an irregularly shaped stone slab, which was discovered in April 1931 in a garden called Baṭatum̆bagahavatta in the village of Velmilla (Welmilla) in the Rayigam Kōraḷē of the Kalutara District. According to local tradition, the villagers long ago dug a large pit near the stone in the hope of finding buried treasure. Finding none, they buried the stone in the pit, where it remained until it was brought to the surface in the 1920s. The slab was broken in two before it was buried and it has since been further mutilated into four unequal parts, one of which is now missing. After visiting the village, Senarath Paranavitana felt that the inscription was of exceptional interest and had it removed to the Colombo Museum in order to preserve it from further damage.

The inscription is dated in the eighth year of king Mahasen Abhā (Mahāsena Abhaya) who, on palaeographic grounds, must be one of the three Senas who flourished in the tenth century. The regnal year precludes Sena IV, whose reign lasted for only three years, and the mention of the heir-apparent Udā (Udaya), son of Sirisaṅgboyi Kasub (Kassapa), rules out Sena V as, although named Udaya, the heir-apparent during his reign was a son of Mahinda IV. By process of elimination, the inscription may therefore by attributed to Sena III, whose reign according to the chronicles extended for nine years and whose mahapā (heir-apparent) was a prince named Udaya. The chronicles do not record this prince’s parentage but the present inscription suggests that his father was Kassapa IV, who was known by the title of Sirisaṅgbo and whose reign was close to that of Udaya III.

The purpose of the inscription was to grant the usual type of immunities to a pamuṇu land situated in Aruṅgam-peḷavaga and belonging to a person whose name is not completely preserved. It may of interest to note that there is a village called Aruggoḍa about four miles from the site where this inscription was found, which may be related to the place called Aruṅgam-peḷavaga in the record.

The inscription is engraved on both sides of a stone slab, now set up near the Buddhist temple at Dädigama (Dedigama) in Kegalle District. The slab has been broken into two fragments and repaired. The inscription was first recorded and translated by H. C. P. Bell in 1892. It is dated on the thirteenth day of the waxing moon in the month of Poson in the ninth year of Bhuvanekabāhu (the sixth of that name), whose reign began around 1470, although the precise year remains a matter of uncertainty. The text proclaims a grant of amnesty, by the king, to the inhabitants of the Four Kōraḷas who had recently rebelled against their sovereign and had just then been reduced to subjection.

Kaludiya Pokuna Archaeological Site, Central Province, Sri Lanka

The inscription is engraved on a slab standing near a ruined structure at a distance of about 250 feet to the south of the stupa in the ruined monastery at Kalupokuṇa or Kaludiyapokuṇa, which lies on the slopes of a range of hills known as Eravalagala, about a mile and a half to the south-east of Kum̆bukkan̆danvaḷa, in the Vagapaṇaha Pallēsiya Pattu of the Mātaḷē District. The inscription consists of forty-six lines. However, the upper part of the slab is badly damaged and consequently the first twenty-nine lines of the text are largely illegible, apart from a few words here and there. Fortunately, the name of the king who issued this edict – Mahasen Maharaj – can be read quite clearly in line 9. Maha (‘Great’) is apparently used here purely as an epithet and does not form an integral part of the king’s name. His mother’s name – Vidurāräjna – is also clear and his father’s name may be read as Udā Maharaj, though not with absolute certainty. Since the inscription may be dated to the tenth century on palaeographic grounds, he was presumably one of the three kings called Sena who ruled in this period: Sena III, Sena IV or Sena V. After studying the available evidence on the parentage of these kings, Senarath Paranavitana concluded that Sena IV (r. 972–975 A.D.) was most likely candidate. The inscription is a katikā, or a set of regulations agreed upon by common consent. It seems to have consisted of three sections: (1) rules for the guidance of the monks, (2) rules dealing with the temple officials, and (3) regulations to be observed by the royal officers in their dealings with the monastery. Of these three section, only the second and third are preserved.

The inscription is engraved on a stone slab, which is now broken, only the upper part surviving. This fragment features nineteen complete lines of writing, plus a few letters from the end of a twentieth line. It is not possible to say how many lines were lost with the lower part of the slab. The surviving fragment was found at the building called ‘the Buddhist Railing’ near the Eastern (Jetavana) dāgäba at Anurādhapura and recorded in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1892 (p. 9, no. 4). It was removed to the premises of the Archaeological Survey and was still there in the early 1930s when Senarath Paranavitana published his edition and translation of the inscription in the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica. The inscription is dated in the seventh year of Sirisaṅgbo Mahind (Mahinda IV) and proclaims certain rules concerning a ‘Water Pavilion’ (pän maḍiya) at the Ratnamāpirivena in the Jetavana monastery. If ‘Ratnamāpirivena’ refers to the building near which the inscription was found, it must have been the ancient name of ‘the Buddhist Railing’.