Bilibǟva

The inscription was discovered in 1896 by the Archaeological Commissioner, H. C. P. Bell, at Bilibǟva in Ihala Kälǟgam Tulāna, about fifteen miles to the south-west of Anurādhapura. Engraved on three sides of a stone pillar, it consists of 80 lines in the Sinhalese alphabet of the latter half of the 10th century A.D. The text is dated to the seventh year of king Abhā Salamevan’s reign and records a grant of immunities to Mahagǟpiyova, a village in the district of Pirivatu in the Southern Quarter, dedicated to the Kasub-Senevirad-pirivena which Sak-Senevi San̆galnāvan had built in the Mahāvihāra. Wickremasinghe suggests that the biruda Abhā Salamevan refers in this instance to Kassapa V.