609823

The inscription is engraved on a stone slab discovered in 1911 by H. F. Tomalin, the Provincial Engineer at Galle, in a culvert near the turn to Cripps Road within that town and afterwards moved to the Colombo Museum. The slab features inscriptions in three different languages, enclosed within a floral border: Tamil (top-left), Persian (bottom-left, IN0351) and Chinese (right, IN0352). The Tamil inscription is dealt with here.

Following the discovery of the slab, the Chinese inscription was successfully transcribed and translated by Edmund Backhouse. However, Rao Bahadur H. Krishna Sastri (Assistant Superintendent for Epigraphy, Madras) and J. Horrovitz (Epigraphist for Moslem Inscriptions in India) failed in their efforts to decipher the Tamil and Persian texts respectively. Sometime later, the Tamil inscription was transcribed and translated for the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (1933: 331–341) by Senarath Paranativana, who benefitted from having access to Backhouse’s translation of the Chinese text.

Like the Chinese inscription, the Tamil inscription is dated in the second month of the seventh year of Yuṅlo (Yung Lo), the Chinese emperor whose reign began in 1403 A.D. The text tells us that the Chinese emperor, having heard of the fame of the god Tenavarai-nāyaṉār in Sri Lanka, sent to him, through his envoys Ciṅvo and Uviṅcuviṅ, various kinds of offerings, of which a detailed list is given. Paranavitana notes that Tenavarai is the Tamil name for Devundara (Devunuvara), a settlement near Matara on the southern coast of Sri Lanka which was the centre of a cult dedicated to a deity known as Uppalavaṇṇa. Sometimes like the Purāṇic Viṣṇy in the Hindu tradition, this god was sometimes styled in Sinhalese ‘Devundara Deviyo’, which can be rendered in Tamil as ‘Tenavarai-nāyaṉār’. The other two inscriptions on the slab feature similar (though not identical) lists of offerings but the beneficiary is different in each case, being the Buddha in the Chinese text and an Islamic shrine or saint in the Persian. It therefore appears that, when the Chinese gained political ascendancy over Sri Lanka in 1409, they made gifts of equal value to several different religious traditions of the region and recorded these gifts on the same stone.

The inscription is engraved on a stone pillar, which now stands outside the cave at the ancient site known as Kaṭugaha-galgē (Katugahagalge) or Aturugiri Vihāra, situated about five miles to the north of Buttala in the Kan̆dukara Kōraḷē of the Ūva Province. The cave is situated on the steep side of a huge granite rock on top of which there is a small stupa now renovated. A part of the cave has been walled, in comparatively recent times, to form a shrine and six cells as living quarters for the monks. In front of the cave are remains of ancient structures, the stonework of which is plain and archaic and bespeaks an early date. The pillar, which has been broken into two unequal fragments, was not originally situated here, having been removed to this site from a neighbouring chena sometime in the nineteenth century.

Two other known pillars bear inscriptions identical to this one. One stands in the vicinity of the colossal stupa at Yudaganava, which is about four miles to the south of Katugahagalge, having been brought there from the neighbouring jungle in 1924. The other was found at Väligatta in Hambantoṭa district and now forms part of the  collection at the Colombo Museum. In August 1927, Senarath Paranavitana visited Yadaganava and Katugahagalge and found that the pillars at these two places, as well as the one from Väligatta, were gavu (P. gāvuta) stones set up by Kāliṅga Cakravartti, i.e. Niśśaṁka Malla, who reigned from 1187 to 1196 A.D. H. W. Codrington subsequently brought to light six more of these gāvuta pillars in the same locality, most of them in a fragmentary condition. Codrington’s paper on these pillars, dealing particularly with the information they yield on the precise length of the yojana and gāvuta (ancient units of measure), was published in the Ceylon Journal of Science (Section G), vol. ii, pp. 129–134. Of all of these pillars so far known, only on the Katugahagelge pillar is the inscription completely preserved. The inscription indicates the pillar marked a gāvunta and it also includes a short homily addressed to the people of Rohaṇa and an account of the achievements and deeds of king Niśśaṁka Malla.

The inscription is engraved at the bottom of the rock-cut steps on the south-western side of Devanagala, a rock situated about three miles to the south-east of Māvanälla in the Galboḍa Kōraḷē of the Kǟgalla District. These steps lead to the summit of the rock, upon which are the ruins of a massive stone building called Paraṇa Vihāra, an old dāgäba, and an image house of Kandyan style. The inscription was first noticed by Edward Müller in his Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon (1883: 60, 87, 120, no. 135), although he did not recognise the text’s historical significance, which was subsequently highlighted by H. C. P. Bell in his Report on the Kegalla District of the Province of Sabaragamuwa (1904: 73–76).

The inscription is dated to the twelfth year of Parākramabāhu I. This king ascended to the throne in 1153 A.D., hence the inscription must have been engraved in 1164–1165 A.D. It registers a grant of certain lands by the king to the general Kit Nuvaragal (Kitti Nagaragiri) in recognition of the latter’s services in an expedition against the Rāmañña country in the Pagan kingdom (modern-day Burma/Myanmar). The inscription provides valuable information about this expedition. It indicates that the campaign took place in or shortly before the twelfth year of Parākramabāhu’s reign and enables us to identify the Pagan monarch at the time of the conflict Alaungsithu (r. 1112–1167 A.D.). These details are not mentioned in the account of the expedition in the Mahāvaṁsa. Alaungsithu is referred to in the inscription as ‘Bhuvanāditta’, a title which, although applied to several Pagan kings, was particularly associated with him.

The inscription is engraved on one side of a stone pillar, which was discovered supporting the shrine in the Buddhist temple at Budumuttǟva (Budumuttawa), a village situated about a mile to the north-west of Nikaväraṭiya in the Kuruṇǟgala District. The temple was built during Kandyan times. The shrine consists of a wood and clay superstructure supported on a number of stone pillars, all of which appear to have been scavenged from the ruins of earlier buildings, though their original contexts are not known. Two of these pillars bear Tamil inscriptions, one of which is dealt with here (see IN03146 for the other). The existence of both inscriptions was first recorded by Edward Müller in his Ancient Inscriptions of Ceylon (1883: 60, no. 1).

The present inscription is dated in the eighth year of king Jayabāhu (I). Although there is scholarly debate about the duration of Jayabāhu I’s reign, it is generally agreed to have begun around 1114 A.D. or slightly earlier, placing the date of this inscription sometimes around 1122. The inscription registers certain gifts made by a princess (possibly called Cundhamalliyāḻvār, although the name is difficult to make out) to a Śaiva shrine named Vikkirama-Calāmēga-Īśvara in the town of Māgala alias Vikkirama-Calāmēga-pura. The town of Māgala must have been in the vicinity of the tank at Nikaväraṭiya, near Budumuttǟva, as that reservoir is still known as Māgalaväva. The princess mentioned in the inscription is described as a daughter of the Coḷa king Kulottuṅga, whom Senarath Paranavitana identified as the powerful ruler Kulottuṅga I (r. 1070–1122 A.D.), and as the wife of a Pāṇḍyan prince called Vīrapperumāḷ. The identity of this prince is less certain but Paranavitana conjectures that he was Mānābharaṇa, otherwise known as Vīrabāhu, the ruler of the Dakkhiṇadesa, the region where the inscription was found. The name Vīrapperumāḷ is a combination of Vīra – possibly an abbreviated form of Vīrabāhu – and perumāḷ, which meant ‘prince’ or ‘lord’ and could be suffixed to a personal name to denote respect.

The inscription is engraved on three sides of a stone pillar, which was discovered supporting the shrine in the Buddhist temple at Budumuttǟva (Budumuttawa), a village situated about a mile to the north-west of Nikaväraṭiya in the Kuruṇǟgala District. The temple was built during Kandyan times. The shrine consists of a wood and clay superstructure supported on a number of stone pillars, all of which appear to have been scavenged from the ruins of earlier buildings, though their original contexts are not known. Two of these pillars bear Tamil inscriptions, one of which is dealt with here (see IN03147 for the other). The existence of both inscriptions was first recorded by Edward Müller in his Ancient Inscriptions of Ceylon (1883: 60, no. 1).

The present inscription is dated in the eighth year of king Abhaya Śilāmegha Jayabāhu. On palaeographic grounds, Senarath Paranavitana identified this king with Jayabāhu I, the younger brother of Vijayabāhu I. Although there is scholarly debate about the duration of Jayabāhu I’s reign, it is generally agreed to have begun around 1114 A.D. or slightly earlier, placing the date of this inscription sometimes around 1122. The inscription records that the officers of Vīrabāhudēvar, having inquired into former custom, upheld that the blacksmiths were entitled to the use of koṭṭacaḷu, foot-clothes and clothes for covering the faces of the dead and ordered the washermen to perform their services accordingly. Paranavitana identified the Vīrabāhu mentioned here with Mānābharaṇa, the father of Parākramabāhu I, since the Mahāvaṁsa tells us that Mānābharaṇa was also known by that name. The pillar was engraved by a person named Mākkaliṅgam Kaṇavadi and was attested by Kummaracena Nambaṉaṉ alias Vijayābaraṇaṉ. There are some more signatories, whose names cannot be satisfactorily made out.