Place: Anuradhapura

The inscription is engraved on a slab found lying in what was at the time believed to be the Jētavanārāma area, not far from the ‘stone canoe’ (trough) on the outer circular road in Anurādhapura. This area has since been shown to be the Abhayagiri monastery complex. The slab was examined by Bell in 1890. The inscription consists of 55 lines in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th and early 11th centuries A.D. The surface of the slab is damaged, rending the inscription is partly illegible from line 19 to the end. The date of the inscription is given in lines 43 and 44 but the name of the king and the number of the regnal year are in great part obliterated. The text gives an account of the Abhayagiri-vihāra and a general survey of the charitable acts of Mahinda IV (called by his title Siri Saňgbo Abā), as well as the religious monuments he erected and repaired.

The inscription was unearthed in 1898 at the image-house of the ruined monastery at Puliyaṉ-kuḷam. The slab is pointed at the lower end and must have originally stood upright. It is engraved with 44 lines in the Sinhalese alphabet of the last quarter of the 10th century or of the first quarter of the 11th century A.D. The inscription records the merits and great deeds of the Chief Governor Udā Mahayā.

The slab was seen by Wickremasinghe in the Archaeological Commissioner’s Office at Anurādhapura. Its original location is uncertain but, as it was placed together with objects from Puliyaṉ-kuḷam, a small village situated two and a half miles north-east of Anurādhapura, it is assumed to have come from the same locality. The material from Puliyaṉ-kuḷam included several inscribed slabs from the piḷima-gē and the stone revetment of the dāgaba, three of which were marked ‘C/6’, ‘C/7’ and ‘C/8’. The present inscription is marked ‘D/8’. It is written in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 12th and 13th centuries A.D. and records the good deeds of the queen Līlāvatī, wife of King Parakkama Bāhu I. It tells us that she ruled the island with the aid of a Council of Ministers and that she built an almshouse in Anurādhapura. There is no date given in the inscription but her reign can be dated by other sources. Līlāvatī was on the throne first from 1197 to 1200 A.D., secondly in 1209 and lastly in 1211. The present grant was probably made during the first period, when the government was administered by Kitti Sēnāpati.

The inscription is engraved on four sides of a quadrangular stone pillar, which was discovered by H. C. P. Bell in 1891 in the jungle close by the ruined dāgaba Kiribat-Vehera, about three and half miles to the north of Anurādhapura. This dāgaba is also called Menik Vehera or Gem dāgaba by local people. The inscription is written in Sinhalese alphabet from the 10th century A.D. Wickremasinghe assigns this record to a period immediately preceding Kassapa V’s reign. The inscription itself is dated in the fourteenth year of a king called Siri San̆go, an epithet often used by kings, but here probably referring to Kassapa IV, who arrived on the throne in 912 A.D. It was set up by a royal order in the presence of three officials, who are named as: Sabā-vaḍunnā Salayem, the bodyguard of the Pāṇḍyan king Dāpuḷa; (Ro)ṭu Pullayem; and Kiling Agbo. The inscription proclaims certain privileges or immunities attached to the dispensary at Bamuṇ-kumbara.

The inscription of 49 lines is written in the same style and language than the two tablets of Mihintale (IN3030). It was engraved just a few months later than those ones, during the reign of the king Mahinda IV (975-91 A.D.). It records rules for the administration of certain lands and villages. It also contains an important mention of the temple of the Buddha’s ‘Tooth-relic’ (Daḷ-dā-ge), which enabled the identification of this temple, rebuilt by Mahinda IV in the centre of the town, as the ruined site known as the Daḷadā Māligāva, situated south-east of the Thūparāma dāgäba.