Person: Senarath Paranavitana

The inscription is engraved on the rough surface of a short pillar slab found in the village of Kivulekada, one and a half miles from Ayitigevewa in North-Central Province. The inscription was first recorded by H. C. P. Bell in 1892. The local Arachchi informed Bell that he had discovered the inscription when he had the slab dug out of the ground for use as a support in his aṭuva (granary). In 1928, Senarath Paranavitana visited the village and found the pillar lying, half-buried, on the ground with the inscribed face downwards, near the spill of the Kuḍā Kivulēkaḍa by the side of the footpath leading to the village of Maha Kivulēkaḍa.

The inscription records a grant of immunities but, curiously, does not name the land to which the grant pertains. It refers to a king named Salamevan, who is described as ‘the founder of the Riṭigal monastery’. The Mahāvaṁsa mentions Riṭigala by the name of Ariṭṭha-pabbata and states that a monastery was ‘erected as if by magic’ on the Ariṭṭha mountain by king Sena I, who is known to have used the viruda title of Salamevan. On these grounds, Bell identified the king mentioned in the present inscription with Sena I, who reigned from around 846 until 866 A.D. No regnal year is given but Paranavitana suggests that the text may date from the latter years of his reign, since the record clearly postdates the king’s building of the Riṭigala monastery, which – according to the Mahāvaṁsa – took place after the Pāṇḍyan raid.

The inscription is engraved on two sides of a stone pillar, which was found, sometime between 1906 and 1912, in a chena near the Malvatu Oya, to the east of the fifth milestone on the Outer Circular Road in Anurādhapura. It was recorded as No. 2 in the list of inscriptions forming Appendix F of the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1911–12 and subsequently moved to the Anurādhapura Museum. The pillar was evidently taken from the ruins of an earlier building. The lower portion of the pillar has been broken off and, at its top, there is a mortise hole to which a wooden capital was probably fitted. The inscription records the grant of a land named Kavuḍāvatta to a pirivena constructed by the heir-apparent (Māpā) Bhuvanaikabāhu, son of Vijayabāhu. The only Bhuvanaikabāhu mentioned in the chronicles as a son of Vijayabāhu is the prince of that name who was the second son of Vijayabāhu III. This prince held the office of yuvarāja, which is very often synonymous with māpā, in the reign of his elder brother, Parākramabāhu II. Hence this record may be attributed to the latter’s reign, which lasted from 1234 until 1269 A.D.

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.

The inscription is engraved on all four sides of a quadrangular stone pillar, currently in the stone gallery at the Colombo National Museum. The location where the pillar was found is not recorded. The pillar was broken into two pieces before it arrived at the museum. As a consequence, it was initially treated as two objects and the inscriptions on the fragments were recorded as distinct texts when eye-copies were produced for the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon in 1907 and 1924. However, the connection between the fragments was later recognised and the pieces were joined together. The inscription is dated on the tenth day of the first half of the month of Mändindina (February–March) in the eleventh year of Kassapa IV, referred to here by his biruda Kasub Sirisaṅgbo. Kassapa IV reigned between 898 and 914 A.D. The text records a grant of immunities to an estate which was an endowment of a lying-in-home founded by the Chief Secretary Senal (Sena).

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.