Person: Don Martino de Zilva Wickremasinghe

The inscription is engraved on a slab found lying 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 appears to have been erected very soon after a similar inscribed slab (IN03061) found in the same area. The present inscription consists of 60 lines in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th and early 11th centuries A.D. The middle part of the slab is damaged, rending the inscription is largely illegible from line 6 to line 39. The inscription does include a date but, due to the damaged condition of the slab, the year – tentatively read by Wickremasinghe as the eighth of Mahinda’s IV’s reign – is unclear. The text starts with a short account of Mahinda IV and his charitable works. It then deals principally with the regulations instituted by Mahinda IV at the Abhayagiri-vihāra soon after completing the reparation of the dāgaba and other buildings attached to the monastery. The stone statue of Buddha mentioned in line 45 of the inscription may be the same as the one that was seen by the Chinese pilgrim Fâ-hien at the Abhayagiri-vihāra when he visited Ceylon in the 5^th century A.D.

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 is situated on a rock at the vāṇa or “spill-water” of an abandoned tank known as Pālu Mäkiccǟva. The tank is situated in the jungle, about 120 yards off the high road to Trincomalee, 16 miles from Anurādhapura. The inscription is composed of six lines, written in Southern Brāhmī alphabet of the latter part of the 2nd century A.D. It records the donation of 5000 kārṣāpaṇas from king Gamiṇi Abaya to the Buddhist priesthood of Tubaraba (Thūpārāma). Gamiṇi Abaya (or Gajabāhuka Gāmaṇī Abhaya) is described as having created the Vaḍamanaka tank in the Upala district but not the Pālu Mäkiccǟva tank, which he appears only to have repaired or deepened. The inscription identifies the Pālu Mäkiccǟva tank as the Abhivaḍḍhamānaka-vāpi tank and says that it was constructed by Gamiṇi Abaya’s grandfather.

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).