Rankot-Dāgaba

Rankoth Vehera, Polonnaruwa.

The inscription is repeated on each of the four pillars which once supported the roof of an open pavilion on the southern terrace of the Ruvanväli or Rankot-dāgaba in Poḷonnaruva. According to the inscription, this pavilion was built to provide a place from which king Niśśanka Malla could pay his adorations to the relics enshrined in the dāgaba. Presumably, the pavilion originally contained an āsana (throne) or dias for this purpose. The pillars are square at the top and bottom with an octagonal section in the centre. All four pillars are fallen and two are broken. The inscription gives an account of some of Niśśaṅka-Malla’s acts, before describing the king’s use of the pavilion. Niśśaṅka-Malla reigned from 1187 to 1196 A.D. No specific date is given in the inscription but, as Wickremasinghe notes, the text must have been composed after the fourth year of Niśśaṅka-Malla’s reign because it refers to the king’s visit to Anurādhapura, which took place in his fourth regnal year, and to his later tours of inspection.

Of the four copies of the inscription on the four pillars, two were first transcribed and translated by Rhys Davids in 1875 for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. The third copy was edited by Müller in Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon (1883). The information below relates to the fourth copy, which was transcribed and translated for the first time by Wickremasinghe in Epigraphia Zeylanica 2 (1912-27). The fourth copy differs from the other three in the number of lines on each side and also in the beginning and end of each line.

Rankoth Vehera, Polonnaruwa.

The inscription is engraved around four sides of the smoothed upper surface of a stone seat (āsana). It was discovered in the jungle some two hundred yards to the east of the ruin known as Ran-kot-vehera in Poḷonnaruva. The inscription consists of six lines and dates from the reign of Niśśaṅka-Malla (1187-1196 A.D.). It gives an account of some of Niśśaṅka-Malla’s acts, before identifying the seat as the one which the king occupied to watch the construction of the Ruvanväli-dāgaba at Poḷonnaruva. Wickremasinghe notes that the stone-seat inscription must be earlier than the Galpota inscription (IN03081) because the latter post-dates the completion of the Ruvanväli-dāgaba. This dāgaba was built to a height of eighty cubits and adorned with a golden pinnacle, from which it gets its present name: Ran-kot-vehera (‘golden-spire-monastery’).