Prof. Karunasena Hettiarachchi gets appointed as the Co-chair of the Ministerial Committee to decipher the Dimbulagala inscription

The Dimbulagala inscription, which was discovered on 10th July 2023 at Dimbulagala Archaeological Reserve, by the Polonnaruwa Archaeological Exploration Team and the Epigraphy Division of the Head Office of the Department of Archeology, is said to be the largest inscription ever found in Sri Lanka. The inscription is about 45 ft in length and 18 ft in height and, took more than a month of difficult and tedious work to copy the inscription into estampage format.

Given the controversies spread about this inscription, the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious, and Cultural Affairs appointed an expert committee comprised of eleven members specialized in Epigraphy on 17th January 2024, to decipher this stone inscription, headed by eminent scholar Dr. Malini Dias and Co-chaired by Prof. Karunasena Hettiarachchi, attached to the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

Unfortunately, 60% of the inscription was unreadable and only 40% was readable. Although around 1000 characters were used for this inscription, mainly it has used 24 Brahmi letters and several rare symbols, which have never been seen in previous inscriptions. According to these signs, characters, and unique symbols, Prof. Hettiarachchi and the expert committee decided to announce that the inscription belonged to the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. or earlier than that.

However, since the preliminary report was complied entirely based on the estampage brought to Colombo, the Co-chair of the committee Prof. Karunasena Hettiarachchi wishes to physically visit the site to provide a more accurate interpretation and to produce a proper report on this inscription.