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(71.)

(72.)

Gāmiņi Abhaya, of the great king beloved of the Gods; to the Community of the four quarters, present or future.

Devanapiya Maha raja Gamani Abayasa puta Tisayasa lene Cuda Sudasana agata anagata catu disa sagasa.

The cave Small Beautiful' of Tissa the Noble,
son of the great King Gamani Abhaya, beloved
of the Gods; to the Community of the four
quarters, present or future.

Devanapiya Maha raja Gamiņi Abayasa puta
Tisayasa lene agata anagata catu disa sagasa.
The cave of Tissa the Noble, son of the great king
Gamini Abhaya, beloved of the Gods; to the
Community of the four quarters, present or future.
This is cut over the wihāra.

With regard to the names of these caves, various titles of such dwellings are sometimes met with elsewhere, as in Nos. 47, 48 and 81. An inscription in letters of the earliest type at Periyakaduwa wihara, in the North-western Province, runs :

(73.)

Symbol, an upright plain cross with wide arms each consisting of two lines joined at the ends by transverse ones. Parumaka Nakatika Tisa puta Parumaka Sumanasa dane. Five dots in a vertical line, making a full-stop. Maha Sudasane nama lene sagasa

The gift of the Chief Sumana, son (of) the Chief Nakatika Tissa. The cave Great Beautiful' by name; to the Community. The name of the donor's father may perhaps be Naga Tikkha Tissa, or he may have belonged to a village of the district now called Naekatta.

Another in characters of the first century B.C., at Rankirimada wihara, in the same Province, is :

(74)

Gamika Wasabayi Parumaka Wasabaya tiba nami lene.

The villager (headman) Wasabhaya's cave, which has the name the Chief Wasabhaya."

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The shapes of the letters in all the Gal-lena inscriptions are distinctly those of the first century B.C. At that period there was only one king, Waṭṭa-Gāmiņi, who was called Gāmiņi Abhaya, and his adopted son Mahācula Mahā-Tissa must have caused the inscriptions to be cut while the king was still reigning, and probably, as he is entitled 'Dēvānam-piya,' in the latter part of his reign, that is, about 80 B.C. The omission to mark the long a or aspirated b in some of them is not unusual elsewhere; it is, in fact, the general rule in Ceylon.

(75.) After Gāmiņi-Tissa succeeded to the throne he made over the great Dambulla cave to the monks, and left there the following inscription :

Symbol, a Swastika elevated on a pole with two short vertical bars on each side of it rising from the base line on which it stands. Devanapiya Mahā rajasa Gāmiņi Tisasa maha lene agata anagata catu disa sagasa dine.

The great cave of the great king Gāmiņi-Tissa, beloved of the Gods; given to the Community of the four quarters, present or future.

(76.) After this we have one at Mihintale cut by his wife. Maha rajaha Gamini Tisaha bariya upasika Ramadaraya 1(e)ņ(e) sagasa.

The cave (of) the female devotee Ramadharayā, wife of the great king, of Gāmiņi-Tissa; to the Community.

We learn from the Mahāvansa that Mahācula had two wives. One was the notorious Anula, the mother of KuḍāTissa, whom his brother married after his death; the other, who became a nun, was the mother of Kalakaņņi-Tissa. Evidently it was she who caused this inscription to be cut.

Prince Gāmiņi-Tissa must have been more than a youth when his uncle Waṭṭa-Gāmiņi adopted him on his accession, as his son; or the succession would not have been secured to him in preference to the king's own son. It may be conjectured that it was a politic act of the king to pacify the party who supported Tissa's claim to the sovereignty. As the Tamil invaders afterwards held northern Ceylon for fifteen years,

he may have been between thirty and forty years old when Waṭṭa-Gāmiņi regained the throne in 88 B.C. He might possibly cut the Rūgama inscription immediately after his adopted father began to reign, that is, in 104 B.C., before the latter had built the Abhayagiri dāgaba and wihāra and thereby acquired the title Dēvānam-piya. At the latest, it must have been cut soon after 88 B.C. The inscriptions at Gallena may have been cut shortly before Waṭṭa-Gāmiņi's death, after he had acquired the title. Next come the inscriptions cut by the sons of Gāmiņi-Tissa. (77.) Mr. Bell found an inscription at Andiya-kanda,

another part of Rițigala, which runs :—

Devanapiya Maha raja Gamani Tisaha puta Devanapiya Tisa A- leņe agata anagata chadu disa sagasa leņe.

Mr. Bell fills the blank in the second name by making the word Abaha, but the inscriptions which follow indicate the expression Ayaha, and the translation would then be :

The cave of Tissa the Noble, beloved of the Gods, son of Gāmaņi-Tissa, the great king beloved of the Gods. A cave of the Community of the four quarters, present or future.

This inscription may belong to Prince Kuḍā-Tissa, and the absence of the royal title in his case shows that he had not succeeded to the throne, that is, it must have been cut before 50 B.C., and most probably during his father's lifetime.

Next comes the inscription at Nuwara-gala in the Eastern Province, which was republished in 1907 by Mr. F. Lewis, in the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. It was discovered and first published by Mr. Nevill in the Taprobanian, vol. i, p. 150. The forms of the letters j and m prove that it belongs to the first century B.C. (78.)

Devanapiya maha rājaha Gamiņi Tisaha puta
Maha Tisa Ayaha leņe sagike.

The cave belonging to the Community, of Mahā-
Tissa the Noble, son of the great king beloved
of the Gods, Gāmiņi Tissa.

The son who left this inscription may be the one who became

King Kalakanņi-Tissa (42-20 B.C.). Mahācula's other son being called Kuḍā-Tissa in the Mahāvansa apparently cannot be the prince here termed Maha-Tissa.

Kalakanni-Tissa is mentioned as a devout Buddhist, and for some time he actually became a monk. As he does not term himself king, this record must date from prior to 42 B.C., and probably from his father's reign.

After this we have thirteen inscriptions at Koṭādaemu-hela and neighbouring rocks in the southern part of the Eastern Province, which were discovered and published in the Taprobanian (vol. i, p. 150) by Mr. H. Nevill. All are described by him as very nearly identical. I therefore give only one transcript, adding the word jaya, as found in some others. (79.) Dama raja puta Maha Tisa Ayaha jita Aya Abaya puta Aya Tisaha (jaya) Abisawaraya dana sagasa.

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A gift to the Community by Abhisawara, wife of the Noble Tissa, son (of) the Noble Abhayā, daughter of Maha-Tissa the Noble, son (of) the devout king.

In some of the inscriptions Maha-Tissa's daughter is termed Abisawara Ayabaya,' and her son's name is also written Tisa Aya and Tisaya.1

As the name of the 'devout king' is not given, and Mr. Nevill did not publish a facsimile of the inscriptions, there is some doubt regarding the identification of his son MahāTissa. At present I can only assume that he is the same person as the Maha-Tissa, the son of Gamini-Tissa, who cut the inscription numbered 77. The fact that he does not receive the title of king indicates that at the time when these were cut he had not succeeded to the throne. For this to be the case it is very evident that early marriages must have been the custom in the royal family, and even in that case GāmiņiTissa must have been born before 120 B.C. for his great-grandson's wife, whose age would not exceed her husband's, to be

1 It is uncertain if the expression sawara indicates a connection with the Vaeddas. Sawara usually stands for sabara, 'barbarian, or in Ceylon, 'Vaedda.'

old enough to cause these inscriptions to be cut before 42 B.C., the year when Kalakaṇņi became king.

The inscriptions are interesting as showing that at this period all the members of the direct line of the royal family had the title Aya (=Ariya), 'Noble,' instead of Prince and Princess. This title is applied to the princes in Prince Sali's inscription, those at Gal-lena, probably that at Andiya-kanda, three others at Bōwata which follow, and No. 34a of Dr. Müller's work.

It would seem that Gāmini-Tissa's grand-daughter, Abhayā, had married some local chieftain of south-eastern Ceylon, and that her son, whose wife caused these inscriptions to be cut, continued to reside in that district.

Three inscriptions were cut at some caves at Bōwata, in the extreme south-east of Ceylon. These also were found by Mr. Nevill, and published without facsimiles in the Taprobanian (vol. i, p. 52 ff.). They are as follows:

(80.) Symbols, Sula and fish. Maraja putha Maha Tisa Ayena karite. (This) is made by Maha-Tissa the Noble, son of the great king.

(81.)

Symbols, Fish and sula. Samaṇaha tedasa Batika
Nā puta sawa putaha pute dama raja dama
raki(ta) ra(ja) Maha Tisa Aye karite (i)ma lēņa
Maha Sudasana sagasa dine.

This cave,' the Great Beautiful,' is made by MahāTissa the Noble, son (of) the samaņa (monk), the famous Bhātik a-Naga, the (best) son of all sons, the devout king, the king who protected the Dhamma (religion); given to the Community. Without facsimiles of these inscriptions any identification of the prince who caused them to be cut must be tentative. There is only one king called Bhātika in the first century B.C.; he began to reign in 20 B.C., and was apparently the brother of the Princess Abhayā of No. 79. His name was Abhaya, and as his younger brother was called Naga there could be no reason for terming him Bhātika (the elder brother) unless his brother's name was also Abhaya in addition to Nāga, or his own name was Nāga in addition to Abhaya. In the

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