Laṅkātilaka

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This set of four copper plates are preserved in the Laṅkātilaka Temple at Udunuwara in Kandy District. These plates are dated in the seventh year of Rājāhirājasiṁha, who reigned from 1781 until 1798. The fourth plate is inscribed with grants of lands to the temple from this monarch and his predecessor, Kīrtiśrī Rājasiṁha (r. 1747–1781). The first three plates, meanwhile, are engraved with copies of earlier grants to the temple made by kings Bhuvanaikabāhu IV and Vikramabāhu III in the fourteenth century. These grants were originally recorded on a rock to the south of the temple (IN03212 and IN03213). However, there are some discrepancies between the rock inscriptions and the texts engraved on these plates. It cannot simply be the case that the engravers of the copper-plates struggled to decipher the original inscriptions, since the discrepancies affect portions of the text which remain clearly legible on the rock. Certain discrepancies appear to be the result of the eighteenth-century scribes having adapted the fourteenth-century text to match their notions of propriety and to magnify the part of Senā-Laṁkādhikāra in the grant to the temple. Furthermore, Senarath Paranavitana conjectures that the copper plates were not based directly on the rock inscriptions but were instead copied from earlier copper-plate charters, which contained variant versions of the texts. It certainly seems to have been the case that the grants proclaimed in the rock inscriptions were also recorded on copper plates, since the inscription of Bhuvanaikabāhu declares as much.

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

This inscription is engraved on the rock outside the gate (vāhalkaḍa) to the west of the main shrine of Laṅkātilaka. It consists of four lines of writing, although the third and fourth lines are entirely illegible due to the weathered condition of the rock. The final line appears to end abruptly, suggesting that the engraving of the record was never completed. The first and second lines refer to the eighteenth year of Bhuvanaikabāhu. Senarath Paranavitana claimed that this must be a reference to Bhuvanaikabāhu V, since the reign of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV did not extent to eighteen years and, on palaeographic grounds, the inscription is cannot belong to any of other kings of that name. Bhuvanaikabāhu V’s reign began in 1371–1372 A.D., hence the present inscription dates from 1389–1390 A.D. The second line of the inscription refers to the vihara and the devālas but, due to the fragmentary nature of the document, the purpose of the record is not clear.

This inscription is one of three lengthy epigraphs engraved on the rock to the south of the Buddhist shrine of Laṅkātilaka in the village of Rabbēgomuwa in Uḍunuvara, Kandy District. Two extensive areas on the surface of the rock are covered with deeply and carefully engraved writing. The upper stretch contains two fourteenth-century Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other (IN03212 and IN03213). Meanwhile, the present inscription occupies a lower stretch of the rock. It consists of forty-six lines in Tamil and seems to date from a similar time period to the Sinhalese inscriptions. Its contents record grants of land and other donations made to the monastery at Laṅkātilaka by its founder – the minister Senālaṅkādhikāra – and by the inhabitants of the realm. The text ends with imprecations against those who would hinder the continuance of the grant, and exhortations made by the minister to kings and minsters of the present and the future for the maintenance of the shrine. The exhortations are embodied in two Sanskrit stanzas with an expanded paraphrase in Tamil. The same stanzas also feature in the Sinhalese inscription of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV on the same rock (IN03212) and the second is included in the rock inscription at Alavaḷa-amuṇa (IN03217), which registers further grants to the Laṅkātilaka shrine. This would seem to suggest that these stanzas were not specially composed for the present inscription but were instead standard forms for expressing such sentiments in this period.