Kassapa IV

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).

The inscription is covers all four sides of a quadrangular stone pillar, which stood in the early twentieth century in a corner of a room in the Kacceri (Government Agent’s Office) at Mannar. It is said to have been found in Māntai or Tirukkētīśvaram (or possibly in the bund of the Giant’s Tank) but the precise circumstances of its discovery are not recorded. The inscription details a grant of immunities to three villages on the northern coast, belonging to the house of meditation (piyangala) named Baha-durusen (Bhadra-sena) in the Mahā Vihāra. The text is dated on the tenth day of the dark fortnight of the month of Mädindina (March–April) in the twelfth year of King Siri Saṅgbo. Since the palaeography belongs to the late ninth or early tenth century A.D., it is likely that the king in question was either Sena II or Kassapa IV, both of whom used the biruda Siri Saṅgbo. Paranavitana (Epigraphia Zeylanica 3, pp. 102–103) favours Kassapa IV on the grounds that the executor of this grant – a minister named Paṇḍirad Dāpuḷu – is also mentioned in the same capacity in the Mäḍirigiriya Pillar Inscription (IN03070), which is dated to the third regnal year of Kassapa IV’s immediate successor, Kassapa V. While the same minister could easily have served both Kassapa IV and his successor, it is highly unlikely that he could have held office from the twelfth year of Sena II’s reign until the third year of Kassapa V’s – a period of more than fifty years.

The pillar was first discovered sometime in or before 1886 by H. Parker in the forest below the embankment of the Padaviya Tank “at the site of an ancient town which is now called Moragoḍa”. It was still there, “lying prone among the ruins”, when Bell and Wickremasinghe visited the spot in October 1891. The pillar is inscribed on all four sides in the Sinhalese alphabet of the 10th century A.D. The inscription is dated in the sixteenth year of reign of king Kasub Sirisaṅgbo, identified as Kassapa IV (r. 912-929 A.D.) It proclaims the grant of certain immunities to lands irrigated by the waters of the Padonnaru tank.