OB03086

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.