Abhayagiri Nisawatta Inscription

Abstract

This inscription which can be traced paleographically to the 9-10th centuries AC throws some light on the life style of the monks of the Abhayagiri monastery during the period. It also enables us to arrive at the correct meaning of a few words found in the ancient Sinhals Buddhist texts. Moreevr this inscription helps us to indentify a type of building found in Buddhist monasteries of the Anuradhapura period, but for what purpose that was used was not known earlier. The identification of the buildign and the meaning of the word nisawatta will be discussed in this article. The old Sinhala worlds nisawatta has been given different meanings by Sinhala scholars. It will be shown that a more accurate meaning to this word could be found int the interpretation of this inscription. As two letters in this inscription were not clear it was with some effort that they were deciphered. This inscription of one sentence contins an instruction, In the absence of syntactical separation of words and phrases, the sentence had to be reconstructed for easy reading, understanding and translation.