This stone was brought from Tibet - unknown age, but it has something written on it in Sanskrit. I don’t even know how to look at it, if it is upside-down please let me know.
But here it is: Sanskrit on Stone
Are you sure that’s Sanskrit? If it is, I guess it’s upside-down; there should be a horizontal line running across the top in Devanagari script. But I don’t really recognize the letter-forms. But then again, I don’t really read Devanagari script. Or perhaps it’s Sanskrit written in a non-Devanagari script.
It might be Tibetan, and if it is then I think it’s upside-down.
It’s Tibetan and it’s upside down.
I’m not sure what it says – I don’t know any Tibetan – but it looks like the letters “a-ma-na.”
As seen in the article linked to by Giles, it’s the “om mani” at the start of om mani padme hum.
It’s not the same as “Om Mani Padme Hum.” The first letter on the stone is missing the diacritical that completes the “Om” and the last letter is missing the diacritical that changes “Na” to “Ni.”
However, it’s possible that for space reasons, I guess it’s possible that some people use “A-Ma-Na” as some kind of an abbreviation for “Om-Ma-Ni.” I don’t really know.
Yeah, I noticed the missing diacriticals but just assumed that there was some reason to elide them. Perhaps they were on another rock? 
That makes a lot of sense, perhaps dropping the first and last diacriticals are some way of abbreviating the text in a normal “Tibetan” way. I don’t know. If it helps, on the other side of this stone is a set of eyes…
I don’t think the diacritics would’ve been dropped if it was intended to be a mantra, pronunciation is quite critical in those cases. Writing “om” as “a” is especially unlikely, as the two have very different meanings and the fact that “om” is written with 3 characters (a-u-m in sanskrit, a + narou o + the labializing suffix marker in Tibetan) is relevant in the mantra’s most typical interpretation.
My guess is that it is a transliteration of something, although I don’t recognize the term. In Tibetan “Ama” is “mother” and “na” is a conditional marker, but they don’t go together like that. There is a Dagpo Kagyu tradition of Mahamudra philosophy called the “four-syllable tradition”, said four syllables being a-ma-na-si but I doubt the last would have been elided from any direct reference. “amana” also means “religious practitioner” in on of the prakrits, but the eyes on the other side are reference to a stupa and as such I don’t think a prakritic term would be written on it.
So I don’t know what to tell you, but that’s what I’ve got.
Check the radar range.
If it’s a stone from a mani wall, that someone ‘liberated’, that’s not very good karma.
If it’s a tourist purchase, you’re probably all right.
What if it was just meant to be a souvenir? I suspect a lot of these things get sold to people like Phlosphr, who are not likely to be relying on it for pronunciation. In any case, “Om Mani” is not the mantra. It’s “Om Mani Padme Hum.” Its purpose might be purely symbolic.
Actually, I work for a Buddhist School, and this was gifted to the school from a teacher who was studying in Tibet. Her home burned down in Tibet some 20yrs ago, and this was one of the few things she recovered. It has a great story, and one of her descendants gifted it to my school… So I think it means something, perhaps I’ll try getting a better picture of it and sending it on, this time with both sides. It’s definitely not a tourist piece.
Thanks everyone, and thanks for the descriptors Omi no Kami.
If it’s not a tourist piece that must mean it was intended for a mani wall and never made it. Maybe you should consider a pilgrimage to get it to a mani wall? It’s quite crude and may have been home made. All the more reason to see it reaches it’s intended destination.
I’m confused though. If you work in a Buddhist school how is it, you don’t recognize this as Pali and the meaning wasn’t evident to one and all? Om Mani Padme Om, is singularly the most recognizable inscription and would be known to every Tibetan/Buddhist.
Slight nitpick-it’s om mani padme hum- the first syllable is the impure mind, body and speech of the practitioner and the pure mind, body and speech of a Buddha, while the last syllable is indivisibility, in this case indicative of an indivisible union of method and wisdom.
As for the souvenir/symbolic piece, I don’t know the original purpose or intent of this piece but in general it would be highly unusual- the diacritics are a necessary part of the orthography and people don’t tend to omit them- in Tibetan they most commonly indicate the vowel sound (every consonant is assumed to be followed by ‘a’ unless written otherwise), so there isn’t a good reason I can see to omit them.
I don’t have any real expertise in Tibetan art or devotional practices though, so there could easily be a standard I’m unfamiliar with.
Tell Striker it’s gonna be another ten minutes.