Object type: Stone slab

This inscription is engraved on both sides of a large slab, which stands near the ancient irrigation canal at Poḷonnaruva. The inscription consists of 65 lines in total but the portion on the second side of the slab is now illegible. The text begins with the auspicious word svasti and a Sanskrit verse. It then states that Vijaya, the eldest son of Siṁha-Bāhu of the Kāliṅga-Cakravarti dynasty came over to Ceylon, defeated the Yakṣas, and became king; that a descendant of his was Parākrama-Bāhu, who brought the Island of Laṅkā under one canopy of dominion; and that this king, desiring the continuation of his dynasty, invited his sister’s son (bǟna) over from Siṁhapura, invested him with royal dignity, and in course of time died. The nephew was thereafter duly anointed king Vijaya-Bāhu, but the day after his accession to the throne some treacherous ministers rose against him. A chieftain named Vijayāyān-tän-nāvan, however, protected the king and, quelling the rebellion, restored peace to the country. In recognition of these distinguished services, king Vijaya-Bāhu granted him heritable lands with certain privileges, the details of which were originally recorded on the second side of the slab. The inscription thus corroborates and expands upon the account of Vijaya-Bāhu’s reign in the Mahāvaṁsa. Vijaya-Bāhu only reigned for a short time, ascending to the throne in 1186 and dying one year later at the hands of Mahinda and Dīpanī.

The inscription covers both sides of a stone slab, which was found completely buried at the North Gate of the ruined citadel at Poḷonnaruva. The slab was subsequently placed in an upright position near the gate. There are 37 lines inscribed on the obverse and 36 lines on the reverse. Another copy of this inscription was found on a slab of similar size and shape at the East Gate of the citadel.

The inscription begins and ends with Sanskrit verses in śārdūla-vikrīḍita metre. The rest of the text is written in Sinhalese and displays the same bombastic style as other inscriptions of king Niśśaṅka-Malla, who reigned from 1187 to 1196 A.D. The inscription gives a panegyrical account of Niśśaṅka-Malla’s virtuous qualities and charitable acts, followed by an exhortation in which he advises his subjects to choose for their sovereign a prince or princess of his own Kāliṅga dynasty. He denounces vehemently the aspiration of the Govi caste and of the non-buddhistic princes from Coḷa or from Kēraḷa to the throne of Ceylon, emphasising these sentiments with the threat that all those who join them would be treated as traitors and would accordingly by extirpated together with their families and their worldly possessions. Wickremasinghe notes that the king’s appeal to his subjects to choose a sovereign from his own dynasty is similar to that given in the Galpota inscription (IN03081).

The inscription is written on the surface and sides of a stone slab. Wickremasinghe recorded in Epigraphia Zeylanica 2 (1912-27) that the slab was at the premises of the Archaeological Commissioner at Poḷonnaruva, to which it had be brought from “the spot where the present rest-house is”. The original site of the inscription is not known and the surviving text is incomplete. What remains of the inscription is a summary of the achievements of king Niśśaṅka Malla, similar to accounts found in other inscriptions of the same king and containing nothing new. Indeed, the text agrees almost word for word with the inner inscription on the Kiri-Vehera slab (IN03090) and with lines 10-12 of the Dambulla rock inscription (IN03032). It may be assumed that, following the established pattern of such inscriptions, the concluding lines of the present text revealed the specific purpose for which it was written. However, these crucial lines are missing. Wickremasinghe speculated that they might possibly be engraved on the reverse of the slab, which he had not seen.

The inscription is engraved on a fragment of a stone slab found in the Tōpaväva village. The fragment originally formed part of a flagstone in the rectangular bath on the promontory at Tōpaväva. Numerous baths were discovered on the promontory in 1901. The other fragments of the flagstone are missing but Wickremasinghe was able to reconstruct the slab’s inscription after recognising that it was the same as the Rankot-dāgaba pillar inscription (IN03087), except for the concluding sentence which states the purpose for which the cistern was used by king Niśśaṅka-Malla. This king reigned from 1187 to 1196 A.D. No specific date is given in the inscription but, as Wickremasinghe notes, the text must have been composed after the fourth year of Niśśaṅka-Malla’s reign because it refers to the king’s visit to Anurādhapura, which took place in his fourth regnal year, and to his later tours of inspection.