Abhā Salamevan

This inscription is engraved on all four sides of a fragmentary stone pillar in the collection of the National Museum in Colombo. The provenance of the pillar has not been recorded. It appears to have been repurposed, sometime after it was originally inscribed and erected, as a riser in a flight of steps, resulting in the loss of some letters from the inscription. The text originally continued on the lower half of the pillar, which has been lost. The inscription can be dated on palaeographic grounds to the early tenth century. From the surviving portion of the text, it is clear that the record registered a grant of immunities by a king who had the viruda name of Abhā Salamevan and who is described as a brother of King Sirisaṅgbo Kasub (Sirisaṅghabodhi Kassapa). Senarath Paranavitana argues that the latter monarch is probably Kassapa IV, since he was the only monarch of the name who ruled in this period and had the viruda title Sirisaṅgbo. However, Kassapa IV is not known to have any younger brothers who succeeded him on the throne. Hence the identity of the Abhā Salamevan of the present inscription remains unclear.

This fragmentary inscription is engraved on all four sides of the upper part of a stone pillar. The text originally continued on the lower part of the pillar, which is missing. Hence there are significant lacunae within the inscription. The surviving fragment of the pillar was first highlighted for scholarship in the Ceylon Journal of Science, Section G, vol. ii, p. 221. It is said to have been found in a land named Malhēna or Polgasyāya. In the 1930s, it was lying in the maṇḍapa of the modern dēvāle at Gonnǟva in the Dēvamädi Kōraḷē of the Kuruṇǟgala District (probably Gonnawa at 7.596588, 80.240385 or possibly Gonnawa at 7.518511, 80.107520), as Senarath Paranavitana recorded in the fourth volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 186). The inscription is dated in the eighth year of a king referred to by his throne name of Abhā Salamevan and contains a decree of the heir-apparent Udā (Udaya) granting immunities to a pamuṇu lank belong to a person named Agbo Mugayin Varadāṇa. The script used in the record belongs to the tenth century A.D. There are two Sinhalese kings of this period who, according to the order of succession, were entitled to the throne name (viruda) of Abhā Salamevan and who also had princes named Udaya as heirs-apparent. These were Dappula V (r. 940–952) and Sena III (r. 955–964), both of whom enjoyed reigns exceeding eight years in duration. It is not possible to say which of these two monarchs is the king mentioned in the present inscription. Since their reigns were only separated by three years, palaeography cannot be used to help settle the matter.

The inscription is engraved on one side of a pillar found at the Vaṭa-dā-gē at Poḷonnaruva, where it had been installed in the pavement. It was recorded as No. 55 in the list of inscriptions examined between 1901 and 1905 in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1905 (p. 40). The pillar was subsequently removed to the Archaeological Museum at Anurādhapura. A portion of the inscription was obliterated at some point in the past, possibly when the pillar was used as a paving slab. Twelve lines remain legible, from which it seems that the inscription was a grant of immunities to a village named Muhundehi-gama. Fortunately, the surviving lines also include the date of the inscription, which is given as the fifteenth year of a king styled Abhā Salamevan. Bell, however, misread this date as the forty-fifth year of Abhā Salamevan. This caused some puzzlement because, although the inscription may be dated to the nine century A.D. on palaeographic grounds, no king is recorded in the historical chronicles of Sri Lanka as having reigned for more than forty years at any time between the fourth and eleventh centuries A.D. As a consequence, this inscription was sometimes cited as evidence that the chronicles do not provide a reliable source for the lengths of royal reigns in medieval Sri Lanka, until Senarath Paranavitana corrected Bell’s mistake in the third volume of Epigraphia Zeylanica (p. 290).  Paranavitana also concluded that the king mentioned in the inscription was probably Sena I, who is known to have used the viruda title Abhā Salamevan.