Vikrama-Bāhu III

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).

This inscription is engraved on a rock, which was found buried at a depth of several feet below the surface of a terraced paddy-field known as Mäddē-patana, situated in the village of Aṁpiṭiya in the Gandahayē Kōraḷē of Pāta Hēvāhäṭē, a division of Kandy District. The contents of the epigraph record the dedication of the village of Aṁpiṭiyē Maddegama to the god of Senkaḍagala, witnessed by the prince Arāvē Arttha-nāyaka ǟpā in the reign of Siri San̆gbō Śrī Vikrama-bāhu, ‘on the day on which the tusker of the god of Senkaḍagala was taken’. The significance of this event is obscure, the usual word in use for capturing a wild elephant being ban̆dinavā. Given that the inscription can be dated on palaeographic grounds to the fourteenth century, the king named in the record can be identified as Vikrama-bāhu III, who came to the throne about 1357 and reigned until at least 1374. In the past, this monarch was popularly credited with making Senkaḍagala (modern-day Kandy) into a capital city but H. W. Codrington has shown that this legend does not reflect the historical reality: it was not until the reign of Sēnāsammata Vikrama-bāhu, a ruler of the hill-country in the latter half of the fifteenth century, that Senkaḍagala was established as a major capital. However, as the present inscription shows, the city did exist prior to this date. Another early reference to the city occurs in the Sagama inscription (IN03211), which mentions Senkaḍagala Nātha-sāmī. This deity is doubtless the same as the ‘god of Senkaḍagala’ referred to here. The Nātha Dēvālē – the oldest temple in Kandy – is dedicated to the god’s cult.