Puzzle

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.

Mysterious symbols on metal creature

Comments (5)

CatsidheJune 1st, 2012 at 10:52 am

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.

JeisukeJune 1st, 2012 at 11:20 am

Rotated clockwise, it looks Tibetan……something like “Om Mani Padme Hum”.

JayaravaJune 2nd, 2012 at 9:53 am

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.

PaoloJune 4th, 2012 at 9:39 am

Thanks for your help. Indeed it is written “Om Mani Padme Hum” is a Buddhist mantra. Thank you again.
Paolo (Italy)

JayaravaJune 4th, 2012 at 3:08 pm

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.