Adityawarman was not content to inherit legitimacy. He manufactured it. The inscription declares him the progenitor of a new dynasty -- the Dharmaraja rajakula -- a claim that appears nowhere else in the historical record. The royal family name typically associated with the Malay kingdoms of this region was Warmadewa, linked to the coastal Kingdom of Dharmasraya. Adityawarman adopted that name too, styling himself Rajendra Maulimaniwarmadewa to claim continuity with the old coastal dynasty while simultaneously declaring himself the founder of something new in the highlands. It was a political move disguised as genealogy. Dharmasraya was declining on the western coast. Adityawarman was establishing himself as the first king of Suwarna Bhumi -- the golden land of Sumatra -- in the interior. The inscription served as both birth certificate and coronation announcement for a dynasty of one.

The inscription's religious language is deliberately eclectic. Adityawarman presents himself as sanctified through abhisheka -- a consecration rite -- according to the teachings of the Tathagata, the Buddha. He is described as sutatha bajra daiya: a good Buddha, strong like lightning. Yet the same text compares his courage to that of Indra, the Hindu deity of storms and warfare. This was not confusion but strategy. Adityawarman practiced Mahayana Buddhism of the Tantrayana school, specifically the Bhairava sect, but he ruled over a population with deep Hindu-Buddhist roots. By weaving both traditions into his self-presentation, he cast himself as a universal sovereign -- spiritual and temporal power fused in a single figure. The inscription commands devotion to parents, teachers, lords, and deities; prohibits killing cows and betraying one's master; and directs all beings toward the samyak-sambuddha-marga, the path of the Perfect Buddha.

The sandstone slab measures 2.06 meters in height, 1.33 meters in width, and 38 centimeters in thickness. At its crown, a carved kala head -- the god of death -- stares outward with 11 teeth and fangs, a tongue protruding between them, horns stylized to resemble a forked serpent's tongue. The 21 lines of text below were carved by a scribe named in the inscription itself: Mpungku Dharmma Dwaja, who held the title Karuna Bajra. This is unusual. No other Adityawarman inscription names its scribe, making the Pagaruyung I inscription a rare document where the craftsman steps out from behind his work. Dutch scholar N.J. Krom first cataloged the stone in 1912, based on field data from the colonial subdistrict then known as Fort van der Capellen. He classified it among the Adityawarman-inscripties, distinguishing inscriptions that name the king from those that merely use his distinctive script.

Today the inscription stands in the Adityawarman Inscription Complex, a 133-square-meter protected site along the main road between Pagaruyung and Batusangkar. It is sheltered under a pavilion whose roof echoes the gonjong -- the curved, upward-sweeping peaks of a traditional Minangkabau rumah gadang. In the 1980s the pavilion was roofed with ijuk, sugar palm fiber; now it wears aluminum. An iron fence 80 centimeters high surrounds the stone, and an iron frame supports it. Seven companion inscriptions, numbered Pagaruyung II through VIII, share the complex. In 2010, the inscription was officially designated a National Cultural Heritage Object by Indonesia's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Renovations in 2022 improved visitor access and installed a new protective roof. The erosion on the stone's surface is visible but the carvings remain largely legible -- 670 years of highland weather have not yet silenced a king who went to considerable trouble to make himself heard.