Does anyone know what the symbols in this photo might signify? It was sent in by a visitor to Omniglot and they don’t look at all familiar to me.
5 thoughts on “Puzzle”
Rotate clockwise 90°, and it looks like Devanagari, written downwards. The topmost character looks a lot like “aṃ”, if I’m reading the tables right.
Rotated clockwise, it looks Tibetan……something like “Om Mani Padme Hum”.
Definitely Tibetan, rotated 90 deg clockwise and written vertically.
ༀམཎིཔདྨཧཱུྂ
oṃ ma ṇi pa dme hūṃ
This is far from expert calligraphy, and probably done by an artisan who did not read the script, but was copying shapes. The hūṃ lacks it’s anusvāra.
Thanks for your help. Indeed it is written “Om Mani Padme Hum” is a Buddhist mantra. Thank you again.
Paolo (Italy)
For the record maṇipadme is one word, and neither Sanskrit nor Tibetan uses capital letters. So it should be written: oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ. However most traditional exegesis of the mantra is not concerned with the words but with the syllables.
Rotate clockwise 90°, and it looks like Devanagari, written downwards. The topmost character looks a lot like “aṃ”, if I’m reading the tables right.
Rotated clockwise, it looks Tibetan……something like “Om Mani Padme Hum”.
Definitely Tibetan, rotated 90 deg clockwise and written vertically.
ༀམཎིཔདྨཧཱུྂ
oṃ ma ṇi pa dme hūṃ
This is far from expert calligraphy, and probably done by an artisan who did not read the script, but was copying shapes. The hūṃ lacks it’s anusvāra.
Thanks for your help. Indeed it is written “Om Mani Padme Hum” is a Buddhist mantra. Thank you again.
Paolo (Italy)
For the record maṇipadme is one word, and neither Sanskrit nor Tibetan uses capital letters. So it should be written: oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ. However most traditional exegesis of the mantra is not concerned with the words but with the syllables.