Person: Senarath Paranavitana

The inscription covers all four sides of a stone pillar, which was found in 1857 near the Horaboraväva (Horaborawewa or Soraborawewa). Situated about three miles to the north-east of Mahiyaṅgaṇa, this tank is the most important of the ancient irrigation works in the province of Ūda. Writing about the Horaborawewa in 1857, John Bailey, then Assistant Government Agent at Badulla, described the pillar as lying in the midst of a forested area, which he speculated was once a range of paddy fields (Sessional Papers 1857, quoted in Herbert White, Manual of the Province of Uva [Colombo: H. C. Cottle, 1893], p. 33). However, when the tank was restored in 1870, the pillar was removed to Badulla and set up near the junction of the Kandy and Baṇḍāravela roads. It stood in this location for over fifty years without attracting any scholarly or antiquarian attention until H. W. Codrington made an eye-copy and transcript of the inscription in 1920.

Containing two hundred and three lines and close to two thousand akṣaras, the text is the longest known pillar inscription in Sri Lanka. The inscription is dated in the second year of Siri Saṅg-bo Udā. Paranavitana identifies this king as Udaya III and, following Hultzsch, dates the start of his reign to 941 A.D., making the date of the inscription about 942 A.D. On palaeographic grounds, the text may be ascribed to the middle decades of the 10th century A.D. The inscription outlines certain rules enacted for the administration of a village named Hopiṭigamy in the Sorabara division. These rules take the form of a charter granted by the king to some mercantile corporations at the place. They enrich our understanding of the lives of peasants and traders in tenth-century Sri Lanka, demonstrating – for instance – that local mercantile corporations were empowered to levy fines, arrest murderers and assist royal officers in the administration of justice.

The inscription is engraved on a copper plate, which was found in 1893 at the ruins of what was then believed to be the Abhayagiri Vihāra in Anuradhapura. This vihāra has since been correctly identified as the Jetavana vihāra. The text of the copper-plate inscription is written in the Nāgāri script. It was first edited in the first volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 40) by Wickremasinghe, who believed the language of the inscription to be mixed Sanskrit. However, Paranavitana recognised that the text was actually in Pāli and published a revised in the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 170). As Paranavitana noted, apart from one or two clerical errors, the verse is identical with the verse of the Vaṭṭaka Jātaka. The plate was the votive offering of a Buddhist pilgrim. However, it is not known whether the pilgrim was from North India or a Sri Lankan devotee who was acquainted with the Nāgāri script. Although this script is used in a number of other inscriptions from Sri Lanka, including some stone records, many clay votive tablets and certain coin legends from the tenth century, this copper plate is an unusual – and perhaps unique – example of the script being used for the Pāli language in medieval times. The peculiar formation of some of the letters was probably due to the scribe being somewhat unfamiliar with script, while the orthographical errors in the inscription may be due to the fact that the script was not generally used to write in Pāli.

The verse was uttered by the Bodhisattva, then born as a quail, when the jungle fire was advancing to swallow him, and when his father and mother had fled. As soon as the verse was uttered, the progress of the fire was checked and the surrounding area was rendered immune from fire for a whole aeon. The incident is counted as one of the five great miracles of the Bodhisattva’s career. It is therefore easy to understand that this stanza should have been considered a fitting subject to be engraved on copper and used as a votive offering. It may also have been used as a charm against fire.

Vessagiri, or more commonly in Sinhalese Vessagiriya, is the traditional name of a forest-bound cluster of rocks in Anurādhapura. The site features three hummock-boulders of gneiss rock in a line from north to south (Rock A, Rock B and Rock C). The hummocks are surrounded by the ruins of a monastery, which had its cells in the caves of Rocks B and C (twenty-three caves in total). Some of the caves are inscribed with dedications to the Buddhist priesthood, plus there are a number of other rock inscriptions at the site.

The present inscription is engraved on the eastern face of Rock B. In 1904, Don Martino de Zilva Wickremasinghe noted the existence on an inscription – or possibly two inscriptions – in this area but he was unable to make out their contents. Two decades later, Senarath Paranavitana gave a more detailed account of the inscriptions on this part of the rock, identifying four separate records, one of which is dealt with here (for the others, see IN03169, IN03170 and IN03171). None of these four inscriptions is dated. However, they can be assigned on palaeographic grounds to the sixth century A.D. It is also significant that one (the present inscription) refers to Boya-Opulavana-Kasapi-gari (P. Bodhi-Uppalavaṇṇa-Kassapagiri) and another (IN03171) mentions Kasaba-giriye. These were alternative names for the ancient monastery of Issarasamaṇa-vihāra, which Paranavitana connects with modern Vessagiriya. This monastery was richly endowed by king Kassapa I, who renamed the foundation after himself and his two daughters, Bodhi and Uppalavaṇṇā, as reflected in the inscriptions here. Hence these records must postdate Kassapa I’s accession to the throne, which Paranavitana places around 526 A.D. All four inscriptions record how certain named individuals obtained freedom from slavery for themselves or their relatives. In one of the inscriptions (IN03171), this freedom is said to have been granted after payments were made to the monastery, suggesting that the monastery owned the slaves in question.