Object type: Stone slab

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.

Galpotha Inscription, Polonnaruwa.

Polonnaruwa. The Gal-pota (stone book), on the east side of the Heta-dágé; a single stone 28 feet long, 5 feet broad, and averaging 2 feet 5 inches in thickness, the upper face inscribed, and the sides and ends sculptured. Photographed by Joseph Lawton (d. 1872), active in Sri Lanka between 1866 and 1872. V&A 82702.

The inscription is engraved on an oblong slab, called gal-pota (‘stone-book’), which lies close to the eastern outer wall of the so-called Häṭa-dā-gē, ‘the Shrine of Sixty Relics’, at Poḷonnaruva. Consisting of seventy-two lines and more than 4,300 letters, the inscription is the longest known in Sri Lanka.  It was created during the reign of Niśśanka Malla (1187-1196 A.D.) but no specific date is given in the text. The contents of the inscription record the great actions of Niśśanka Malla. Wickremasinghe interprets the text as part of an broader political strategy in which the king commissioned numerous inscriptions extolling his good deeds in a bid to present himself as a sovereign who held his authority entirely for the good of the community, thereby winning the confidence of his subjects and securing his claim to the throne. Niśśanka Malla appears to have been the first Sri Lankan monarch to employ such a strategy. The galpota inscription contains an important exposition of his political theory of kingship.

The galpota is aligned north-south and measures more than eight metres long. It was raised on a brick podium sheltered by a canopy supported on ten pillars. Both sides and ends of the slab are ornamented by double bands of haṁsas moving from left to right. At the middle of each end is a seated figure of Lakṣmī holding flowers, upon which a pair of elephants pour water from a chatty. The surface of the slab is divided into three partitions, each of which contains a portion of the inscription, starting from the first line at the top left-hand (south-west) corner of the stone slab. These partitions are designed to be read separately. The third partition is damaged, rendering some parts of the inscription illegible. A postscript on the vertical face of the southern end of the slab tells us that this stone was brought for the special purpose of engraving the present record from Sǟgiriya (Mihintale) by the mighty men of Niśśaṅka-Malla. This would imply that the slab was transported upwards of eighty miles. However, Wickremasinghe and others have suggested that the stone was in fact sourced from Sigiriya, only 15 miles distant, rather than Sǟgiriya.

The Inner Shrine at the Hatadage, Polonnaruwa.

The inscription is engraved on a series of slabs originally built into an inside wall of the so-called Häṭa-dā-gē, ‘the Shrine of Sixty Relics’, at Poḷonnaruva. It was discovered by S. M. Burrows in 1885, along with another inscription in the vestibule of the shrine (IN03079) and one in the adjoining portico (IN03078). Consisting of eight lines, the inscription dates from the reign of Kīrti-Niśśaṅka-Malla (1187-1196 A.D.) and provides a tactfully worded exhortation to Buddhist monks to exercise care in the selection of persons for admission to the priesthood and to desist from doing things contrary to the teaching of the Buddha.

Entrance to the Hatadage, Polonnaruwa. The slab inscription can be seen on the right in this photograph.