OB03081

The inscription is covers the upper end of the prepared surface of a stone slab, which was discovered in July 1921 in or near a village called Ānaulundāva to the north of Poḷonnaruva. The text consists three lines written in the Sinhalese alphabet of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The third line is no longer legible and the first and second consist only of a number of high sounding titles of honour in Sanskrit. Wickremasinghe notes that these titles are practically identical with those applied to certain members of a guild of merchants called Vīra-Baṇañju or Vīra-Vaḷañjiyar, who are referred to as prominent donors in several Kanarese inscriptions of the twelfth century, including those from Kolhāpūr, Miraj and Mamdāpūr (see Epigraphia Indica 19 [1927-28], pp. 19-41). The inscription would thus seem to suggest that these merchants were present in Sri Lanka in the twelfth century, leading Wickremasinghe to infer the possibility of their having acquired important trading and other concessions during the time of Kīrti Niśśaṅka-Malla. Following their practice in Mysore and elsewhere in India, the merchants may have set up the present slab to record one of their pious gifts to a Hindu temple.