Tamil in Ancient Jaffna and Vallipuram Gold Plate
By Dr. Alvappillai Veluppillai
The northern and the eastern provinces of Sri Lanka, two out of nine provinces of that country, are
generally referred to as the traditional homelands of the Tamil speaking people. The Northern Province
is predominantly Tamil and mainly Hindu. The eastern province is predominantly Tamil speaking and
the Tamils and the Tamil speaking Muslims are the major communities there. Geographically, Jaffna
District of the Northern Province is the furthest from the traditional homelands of the Sinhalese, the
major community in the Island. Jaffna is also the area, closest to South India, the distance from Point
Calimere in Tanjore District to the nearest point in Jaffna is said to be only about twenty two miles. The
northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka are generally sparsely populated except for Jaffna which is
very densely populated. When the Portuguese came to Sri Lanka in the sixteenth century, they found
three well established kingdoms in Sri Lanka and one of them was the kingdom in the North. There is
definite evidence that this kingdom of Jaffna was in existence at least from the thirteenth century A.D.1
It is very unfortunate that up to the time of Cōla conquest of the Island in the eleventh century, there is
very little historical evidence for the reconstruction of the history of Jaffna. Few Buddhist remains have
been discovered in certain parts of Jaffna, especially at Kantherodai. Wide publicity is being given to the
Buddhist character of the ruins but not to the red and black brick ware which is generally associated
with Dravidian culture. According to Mahavamsa, the Pali chronicle in Sri Lanka, Sanghamitta, Asoka’s
daughter‐turned Buddhist nun who came with a branch of the Bo‐tree landed in a port in Jaffna2 and
King Devanampiya Tissa who ruled from Anurādhapura, went to receive her, and built a Buddhist
temple there. His emissaries to Asoka were mentioned to have left previously for Magadha through a
northern port. Jaffna has been identified with Man̩ipallavam of Man̩imēkalai.3
Vallipuram is a small village near the tip of the north‐eastern corner of Jaffna peninsula. At Vallipuram
were discovered ruins of some funerary urns, usually associated with Dravidian civilization of the early
centuries of the Christian era or even earlier. At Vallipuram was also found a fine Buddha image of stone,
in the Amaravati style, which was unearthed in the land close to the Vishnu temple, which was brought to
and preserved in Jaffna when it was presented by Governor Sir Henry Blake to the king of Thailand.
When the land around the Vishnu temple was cleared, a gold plate inscription came to light in or about
1936.4 It seems to have passed through various hands before it came to the hands of a Buddhist monk
who finally handed this over to Senerat Paranavitana, the then Archaeological Commissioner of Sri
Lanka. The small gold plate of 1 and 3/4” x 1”, consisting of four lines refers to the building of a Buddhist
temple. On this meagre evidence, Paranavitana rushed to the conclusion that the remains of a Sinhalese
Buddhist civilization had been discovered there.5 His imagination seems to have been propped up by the
presence of a stretch of sandy waste, between the village of Vallipuram and the sea, which is strewn with
vestiges of human habitations over an area about four miles in length and a mile in breadth, foundations
of buildings, bricks, pottery and coins being occasionally brought to light by the villagers digging there.6
1 Pathmanathan,S. The Kingdom of Jaffna, Part I, pp. 1‐302, Colombo, 1978
2 Geiger.W. The Mahavamsa or the Great Chronicle of Ceylon, Chapter XVIII, Colombo, 1960. The landing port of Sanghamitta is
mentioned as Jumbukolapatuna. Patuna is equivalent to pat’in’am, ‘coastal town’ in Tamil. This expression is peculiar to Dravidian
speaking areas. So, this place must have been a predominantly Dravidian settlement.
3 Pieris, Dr. Paul E. Nagadipa and Buddhist Remains in Jaffna. Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch, pp. 11 ff Colombo, 1917‐
18 proposed the identification of Nagadipa with Jaffna peninsula. Mudaliar C.Rasanayagam had referred to the evidence found in the
Tamil poem Man’imekalai supporting Dr.Peiris’s identification of Nagadipa. The twin epics, Cilappatikaram and Man’imekalai draw in
Sri Lanka closely to Tamilnadu. Cilappatikaram refers to Gajabahu or Kayavaku’s participation in the festival of Kan’n’aki or Pattini
worship by the Chera king. Man’imekalai refers to pilgrimages to Man’ipallavam and Ratnadipa of Sri Lanka.
4 Paranavitana, S. Vallipuram Gold Plate Inscription of the Reign of Vasabha, Epigraphica Zeylanica, Vol.IV, pp. 229‐237, Colombo,
1940.
5 It is worthy of note that Paul Peiris had not rushed to such a hasty conclusion
6 No proper excavations or serious archaeological study have been done in this area so far. When Sapumal Kumarayya or
Sampahapperumal of Kotte invaded the kingdom of Jaffna in the 15th century, he is said to have erased Simhai Nagar, the capital of
The inscribed gold plate is claimed by Paranavitana to have been discovered beneath the foundation of
an ancient structure.7
Paranavitana had edited this inscription about forty years ago. His reading of the text, in transliteration is
as follows:
1. Sidha Maharaja Vahayaha rajehi amete
2. Isigiraye Nakadiva bujameni
3. Badakara atenehi Piyaguha‐Tisa
4. Vihara Karite
His translation is as follows:
Hail! In the reign of the great king Vaha and when the minister8 Isigiraya was governing Nagadiva,
Piyaguka Tisa caused a vihara to be built at Badakaraatana.
From this short one sentence inscription, Paranavitana arrives at sweeping conclusions. According to
him the script was Brahmi of the second century A.D. and on the whole, agreed with the alphabet which
occurred in dozens of stone inscriptions of the period, found in various parts of the Island. He was able to
note that some letters on this plate were of less monumental appearance and more cursive in character
than the corresponding symbols found in stone inscriptions but he justified the difference in the
materials written upon. He also came to the conclusion that the language was old Sinhalese, conforming
in general, to the grammatical standards followed in other documents of the period. Paranavitana went
further and declared that this inscription also proved that Nāgadipa was governed in the second century
by a minister of the Anurādhapura king, that Sinhalese was the prevailing language and that Buddhist
shrines were built there. This paper of Paranavitana had assumed unnecessary and unworthy attention
recently as people have started writing provocative newspaper articles, quoting that paper without
comment or criticism to deny Tamils, their historical habitat within the Island.9 The present writer will
try to show that Paranavitana’s claims are far too exaggerated.
The point of view that the prevailing language was Old Sinhalese had already been challenged in a Tamil
article written by Gunasingam.10 He also pointed out that this single short one sentence inscription
should not be given far too much importance. He had discussed the matter about issuing inscriptions in
that kingdom. According to Yal_ppan’avaipavamalai, a traditional chronicle of Sri Lanka Tamils, Ugrasinhan of Kalinga established his
capital at Simhai Nagar in the eighth century A.D. and ruled from there.
Rasanayagam and Prof. K.Kanapathippillai identified Vallipuram ruins with those of Simhai Nagar.
Rasanayagam, C. Ancient Jaffna, Everyman’s Publishers Ltd., Madras 1926.
Kanapathippillai, K. Ila?kai va? Tamilar Varalar_u, Peradeniya, 1956.
7 According to newspaper reports, the Jaffna Archaeological Society had discovered at this site, funerary urns, a characteristic of
ancient Dravidian civilization. Further expert study is called for.
8 Paranavitana had translated amate, i.e. amatya as minister, probably to over emphasize his point. But this term can be translated as
‘governor’’, as done in studies of Saka and Satavahana administrative systems. See Haripada Chakraborti – Early Brahmi Records in
India, pp. 189, 190, 194, Calcutta, 1974.
9 Newspaper articles on Ancient History and Archaeology have been written by all and sundry. The present writer will confine himself to
cite a few examples of such articles from Ceylon Daily News, the most popular English daily news‐paper in Sri Lanka, Ceylon Daily News
of 15.5.1979 carried a middle page article on ‘Vallipuram Gold Plate Inscription of Vasabha’, summarizing the conclusions of
Paranavitana. The writer of that article did not identify himself. He was just mentioned as ‘Special Correspondent’. The same newspaper,
dated 18.6.1979 carried a middle page article by Professor S.Ranawela on ‘The So‐Called Kingdom of Jaffna’, quoting the views
of Paranavitana with approval. The same news‐paper carried a middle page article by M.H.Srisoma on ‘Remnants of Buddhism in
Jaffna’, quoting the views of Paranavitana with approval
It is interesting to note that when the Tamils of the present day Kanyakumari District, formerly a minority group in Kerala were
mounting an agitation for their rights, there was also an attempt to distort History in order to deny the Tamils their historical habitat
rights. See S. Sathasivam, Cerana’um Centami’um, Seventh edition, Nagarcoil, 1970.
10 Gunasingam, S. Vallipurattuppon_n_et?t?in_ varala?u mukkiyattuvam or ma?u matippi?u‐ Sri Vallipura Al_var cuvami kovil,
Tunnalai Tiruk kut?amu?ukkumalar, pp. 5‐7, Jaffna, 1977.
the prevailing language of the area and showed conclusively that this practice had not been universally
followed. For example, the Cōlas issued their inscriptions in Tamil in Polonnaruwa even though the
prevailing language must have been Sinhalese.11 Gunasingam also distinguishes between inscriptions
about royal proclamations, etc. which were meant to be understood by the masses of the region and
inscriptions which tried to preserve the history of religious establishments and hence were of interest to
the monks only or their adherents. He also points out that unlike the medieval Hindu temples which have
preserved lengthy inscriptions in regional languages, the Buddhist viharas, especially of the early period,
were not centres of social life of the community living around the temple. So what he says is that this
solitary record cannot be stretched to yield the conclusion that the prevailing language of Ancient Jaffna
was old Sinhalese.
Paranavitana seems to have thought that palaeographically, Vallipuram Gold Plate did not mark any
significant change from the other records of the Age in Sri Lanka. It fell to A.H. Dani to discuss the
significance of the palaeography of this plate in a scientific way: “Of these, the gold plate inscription has an
individual character of its own. In this particular case, the lower curves of the verticals are over emphasized
and the medial i has a sharp curve to the left. The Ikshvaku forms are marked in a,i, u, ka (optionally), ga,
ma, ya, ra, la and va. From the same source is copied the letter l̩a…. In the Ceylonese inscriptions, we have
definite evidence of the school of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda writing reaching Ceylon. Probably in the
latter half of the third century A.D.”12 Paranavitana who mentions the discovery of a Buddha image of
Amaravati style, should have taken the clue and proceeded to compare the script at Amaravati and
Vallipuram. The Ikshvākus were a dynasty ruling in Telugu speaking Andhra Pradesh and both
Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda were in that region. What is important to note here is that though
Andhra Pradesh was a Dravidian language speaking area, the rulers and the Buddhist monks were
recording their inscriptions in Prakrit.13 Though the Ikshvaku rulers were considered to be of an Aryan
dynasty, they seem to have had close connections with the Tamils.14
The Buddhist monks in Jaffna have maintained close contacts with those in South Sri Lanka, in Tamilnadu
and in Andhra Pradesh, and that might be the reason for the composite script found in Vallipuram.
Paranavitana might have been encouraged to pronounce the Brahmi sounds like ‘ma’ and ‘i’had been
replaced by characteristically North Indian forms in this inscription. But Iravatham Mahadevan and
Mahalingam had noted, this change had come about in later Tamil Brahmi inscriptions of Tamilnadu
also.15 Further, an observation of Dani that in those days, scripts were not associated with particular
languages and that the association of a particular script with a particular language was a later
development is very pertinent here.16 Paranavitana, of course, could not have anticipated these later
developments but pseudo‐scholars who quote him now should be familiar with them.
11 Veluppillai, A. Cacanamum Tamilum, last section, Peradeniya, 1971.
12 Dani, A.H. Ceylon, Indian Palaeography, pp. 215‐226. Oxford, 1963.
13 Mahadeva Sastri, K. Introduction, Historical Grammar of Telugu, pp. 1‐19, Anantapur, 1969.
14 Satyanarayana, R. A study of the History and Culture of the Andhras, p. 239, New Delhi, 1975.
He says, “Some of the Buddhist inscriptions issued as far back as the Ikshvaku period reveal cultural contacts between Andhra and
Tamilnadu. For instance, Ethuvala, the name of the third Ikshvaku king is combination of the Old Tamil work ‘ehku’(steel) and the
Sanskrit bal (strength). A daughter of Santamula, the first of the Ikshvakus, bears the name Adavi Santisri where adavi means forest.
One of the relatives of a donor mentioned in an inscription is Karum Budhina. Here, Budhina is a contraction of Buddhinaka and Karum
in Tamil means ‘black’. Even the Sanskrit word bal(a) was derived from Dravidian val, ‘strong’.
See T. Burrow, The Sankrit Language, p. 384, London, 1973. Recent discoveries of three bilingual Satavahana coins from different parts
of Andhra Pradesh, issued by successive Satavahana rulers raises so many possibilities. These coins were issued in Prakrit and Tamil (or
Dravidian?). Did the Satavahanas patronize Tamil? The Ikshvakus were formerly feudatories of the Satavahanas.
See Nagaswamy, R. Fresh Light on Dravidian people, Art and culture of Tamilnadu, pp. 281‐288, Delhi, 1980
15 Mahadevan, Iravatham. Corpus of the Tamil Brami Inscriptions, Seminar on Inscriptions, Madras, 1966.
Mahalingam, T.V. Date of the Inscriptions, Early South Indian Palaeography, pp. 193‐200, Madras, 1967.
16 Dani, A.H. op.cit., Preface, p.X
The present writer has to confess that he could not understand why Paranavitana rushed to the
conclusion that the language of the inscription was Old Sinhalese. Prakrit was the language of
inscriptions throughout South Asia except in Tamilnadu, for the first few centuries before and after