INSCRIPTION FROM DAMBULA.
MAY 3, 1872.]
139
THE CAVE OF THE GOLDEN ROCK, DAMBULA, CEYLON. By T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, C.C.S., ANURADHAPURA,
SIR EMERson TENNENT has eloquently and yet very justly described this wonderful hill of stone “underneath which the temple has been hol lowed out, which from its antiquity, its magni tude, and the richness of its decorations, is by far the most renowned in Ceylon.”
He has
given two woodcuts which afford a good idea of its front and its entrance, but fail altogether to do
justice to the effect created by its enormous size: and he has all the more strongly, because inadvertently, testified to the curious success of the paintings within, when he states that “the ceiling of this gloomy vault is concealed with painted cloths,” for what seemed, even to so educated an observer, to be cloths is, in
reality, the rock painted in fresco, and this is the more remarkable as those paintings
were undoubtedly executed hundreds of years ago.t
Sir Emerson Tennent mentions one inscrip tion which was translated for Turnour by Mr. Armour,f but I have discovered eleven others, and believe that still more would reward a care
ful search, and I venture to submit the oldest and for some reasons the most interesting. From this inscription it may be considered
proved that the temple was originally founded, not by Walagam Bâhu about 86 B.C., as stated
by Tennent,$ but in the time of Dewänam piya Tissa (B. C. 246)|| the ally of Aśoka and the friend and patron of Mahindu who intro duced Buddhism into Ceylon. It is possible that Walagam Båhu repaired
of the original on the point in question. Uphamt says:—
“He (Wattagāmini, in Sinhalese Walagam Båhu) afterwards caused to be built the temple Dambooloo, and a monument 140 cubits high, and five tem ples : he also caused many hundreds of stone houses to be built, and did many other things of public utility.”
The original words are: * * * * naewata Dambulu willāraya da karawā, nae wata Soma nam ek siya hatalis riyan maha weherak karawá, nawata pas maha willărayak da karawá, boho
siya ganan gal-lenawal katára kotawā, anikudu boho sasanopakari wiseka :—which literally translated is—
“And furthermore having made the Dambulu wihāra, and also having made the great Dáhgoba 140 cubits high called Soma, and also having made five large wiháras, and having cut ledges in many hundred stone caves, he was of great assistance in other ways also to ‘the Doctrine.’” It is difficult to find the source from which
Abhayarāja, the author of Rája Ratnākara, de rived the first statement, for nothing is said either in the Maháwanso or in the Dipawansa
about Dambula Wihāra being made by Watta gämini although in the formerS the names of five, and in the latterſ the names of seven com paratively unimportant ones, made by his eight strong men, are given: but nothing is said about it in Rájawaliya, although a compa
ratively large space is devoted to that king's reign.
The inscription referred to is cut in the face
the temple, and it is certain that he built the Soma
of the rock, in one line, under the ledge or eaves
dăgoba, in honour of his queen," in the plain
called “katāra' in Ceylon—formed to cause the rain to drop off instead of trickling down into the cave. Owing to this position the inscription is in perfect preservation, and is only difficult to read from its great height above the ground, the katára being half way up a precipice 200 feet high. My copy is therefore only an eye copy taken with an opera glass: but the characters being so simple it may, I think, be relied upon.
to the south of the sacred hill; but the autho rity adduced by Tennent for his statement that that king first endowed it is of little value, be
ing merely Upham's translation of the Rāja Ratnākari, a grossly inaccurate translation of a very useful but late and unreliable work.
The
ignorance of the translators having been so cruelly exposed by Turnour,” I quote the words
• Sir E. Tennent, Ceylon, vol. II. pp. 575-578, 2nd edition. A detailed account of the Dambulla temple is given in
Forbes's Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. I. ch. xvi. pp.367-376; and by Mr. Knighton, Jour. As. Soc. Ben. vol. XVI. (1847) pt. i. pp. 340-350.-Ed. + The engraving in Forbes's Eleven Years in Ceylon,
according to the Sinhalese chronology, by which Asſoka is placed 60 years before the date usually assigned to him—Ed.
- This building is mentioned in Mahāwanso 206-8, but
it has not been previously known where the dagoba was ; the Revd. C. Alwis writes to me that it is supposed to contain
-
the left canine tooth of Buddha, and to be somewhere near Trinkomali.
Frontispiece, Vol. II. is a striking but inaccurate view of one of the interiors.
- Mahāwanso pp. v. seqq.
f Appendix to Turnour's Epitome, p. 95, and Forbes, Ceylon, Vol. II. pp. 327, 350.
+ | § |
§ Loc cit. p. 578. | I have ventured to substitute this date for B. C. 306
Sacred and Historical Books, Vol. II. p. 43. From the MS. in my possession, verse 50. Page 206, 13. Verses 1142 and 1143 of the MS. in my possession.
