Palm Leaf Manuscript

text-monochrome, a photo by jayarava on Flickr.

Just bought this for £5 from a charity shop. Trying to identify the script. It looks a bit like Sinhala to me, but the images on the cover are of Ganeṣa, Dūṛga and Hayagrīva. Clearly it is some kind of Southern Brāhmī script.

Can anyone shed light on what this script is?

Most of the manuscript is in poor condition, and very difficult to read.

Upadate 12-6

Hi Jayarva,

I went through the Manuscript again, actually the transcribed sentence should be:

+රරූඩ්කොටවෙලාද්රග+
[+]rarū|ḍ|kŏṭavĕlā|d|raga[+]

(The vertical loop is the virama. The /i/ sign is more open looped in the manuscript). In cursive handwriting, the adjacent /aa/ vowel sign seems to have written connected to the ka. Though I am not sure of /ḍ/ & /d/ readings.

කොටවෙලා/කොට වෙලා seems to give some Google hits in Sinhala.

I could make out some thing with 7th line of the left section:

[+]දේ කිරි ගෙනෙල්ලා කටෙ තිය[+]
[+]de kiri gĕnĕllā kaṭĕ tiya

(de is probably a partial word ending)

කිරි/ගෙනෙල්ලා/කටෙ/තිය as individual words give Sinhala hits in Google. The Combined කටෙ තිය is also giving hits. In the initial part of the manuscript, කේ ke (with explicit long o) is written, which is characteristic of Sinhala. (Similary /re/ is written with explicit long /e/ )

Also, there seem to be some word endings with /ya/ - again pointing the Sinhala (Even the Skt. sutra is written as sutraya in Sinhala ). The document is most probably Sinhala. If you can get some one with working knowledge of Sinhala, the content of the manuscript can be figured out.

Vinod

[Thanks Vinod. Something odd happened with your comment so I cut and pasted from the email notification - hope you don't mind. Thanks for your help! JR]