Laṅkātilaka

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. An inscription of forty-six lines in Tamil (IN03214) is engraved on the lower stretch of the rock. The upper stretch contains two Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other. The top record is dated in the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV of Gaṁpaḷa (IN03212) and the bottom record is from the reign of his successor, Vikramabāhu III. The second of these two records is dealt with here. It registers the granting of two villages – Paṭṭiyegama and Rabbogamu – to the monastery at Laṅkātilaka by the king and his Äpā (heir-apparent). The inscription is dated on the tenth day of the waxing moon in the month of Unduvap in the third year of the king’s reign. Vikramabāhu III reigned from 1357 to 1374, making the date of this inscription November-December 1359. Another version of the present inscription is engraved on a set of copper plates preserved inside the Laṅkātilaka temple (IN03216).

Lankatilaka Vihara, Udunuwara, Kandy District

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 Sinhalese inscriptions arranged one above the other: the first of these records is dealt with here and features thirty-three lines, dated in the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV of Gaṁpaḷa; the second consists of seven lines from the reign of Bhuvanikabāhu IV’s successor, Vikramabāhu III (IN03213). Meanwhile, an inscription of forty-six lines in Tamil (IN03214) is engraved on the lower stretch of the rock. Another version of the present inscription is engraved on a set of copper plates preserved inside the Laṅkātilaka temple (IN03216).

The present inscription is dated in Śaka 1266, being the third year of Bhuvanaikabāhu IV. This date is equivalent to 1343–1344 A.D. The contents of the inscription consist of a fairly detailed account of the founding of the Laṅkātilaka shrine, mainly due to the efforts of Senālaṅkādhikāra. This is followed by a list of lands and other donations made to the shrine by the king, Senālaṅkādhikāra and other notables of the period. It 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 Sinhalese. The same stanzas also feature in the Tamil inscription on the same rock (IN03214) 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.

Lankatilaka Vihara, Polonnaruwa

The inscription was discovered on the inner face of the left guard stone of the east entrance to one of the buildings in the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra in Poḷonnaruva. The discovery was noted by H. C. P. Bell in the Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon for 1910–1911. Although bad weathering has rendered the middle lines of the inscription unreadable, the rest of the text is perfectly legible. The inscription consists of seventeen lines in Pāli. The composition is metrical, the whole text being framed in two gāthās. The first half of the first gāthā records that king Parakkama-Bāhu I (r. 1153–1186 A.D.) built the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra; the other half is illegible but seems to deal with some repair works to a wall of the aforementioned temple. The second gāthā tells us that the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra fell into a state of disrepair for one hundred years until king Vijaya-Bāhu IV (r. 1270–1272 A.D.) had it completely rebuilt. The Mahāvaṁsa confirms that the Laṅkātilaka Vihāra was built by Parakkama-Bāhu I. It further notes that, towards the end of the reign of his father Parakkama-Bāhu II (r. 1236–1269 A.D.), the future Vijaya-Bāhu IV made extensive repairs to temples and shrines in Poḷonnaruva. Taking this evidence together with the text of the guard-stone inscription, it is clear that the Laṅkātilaka was one of the structures repaired during this campaign of restoration. However, Wickremasinghe was unable to determine whether Vijaya-Bāhu IV had had the inscription engraved on an existing guard-stone which was already in situ or whether the text had been incised on a new stone added to the temple entrance during the repair works.