Dharma Wheel

Hi, is there anyone who knows how to pronounce and transliterate this letter? Thanks!!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-rRco ... sp=sharing

wisdomfire wrote:Hi, is there anyone who knows how to pronounce and transliterate this letter? Thanks!!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-rRco ... sp=sharing

Here it is in unicode: ཊྐཾཿ

Transcribed into Extended Wylie it would be either 'TkaMH' or 'T+kaMH', and in IAST it would be 'ṭkaṃḥ'.

It has the characteristics of a Tibetanised Sanskrit seed-syllable, but I have been unable to find any reference to it online.

As to its pronunciation, my guess is as good as anyone's based on its component sounds:

ཊ - unaspirated voiceless retroflex plosive (IPA [ʈ])
ཀ - unaspirated voiceless velar plosive with inherent central mid vowel (IPA [kə])
ཾ - (Skt: anusvāra) nasalisation of the vowel (IPA [◌̃])
ཿ - (Skt: visarga) glottal fricative (IPA [h])

http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/c ... IPAlab.htm provides audio illustrations of these sounds.

I've not seen this before,but is it possible that it is Ter Shay? Is it possible there is a little "moon" between the two "circles" following the stacked characters?

The fact that it has Anusvarga and Visarga is strange.....

Two possibilities--TerShay, or "terma marks" --if it appears at the beginning of a page of text,--or, possibly some sort of "dakini language"??

I find that, with characters like this, context is everything. Where is it from?

conebeckham wrote:I've not seen this before,but is it possible that it is Ter Shay? Is it possible there is a little "moon" between the two "circles" following the stacked characters?

I was wondering the same thing. There are instances of ཊྐཾ on the internet (in the form of 'ṭkaṃ'), so perhaps a ter shay (༔) has been misinterpreted somewhere along the line.

Thanks for all the replies. I uploaded the whole page online below. It is from the Gesar cycle of Mipham Gyatso.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-rRco ... sp=sharing

So is this character simply pronounced 'Tam' or 'Kam'? If anyone has a definite answer, please let me know. Thanks

Dharmagoat, how did you input a tibetan character (unicode) here in the forum?

I believe this is some sort of marker, and not actually "pronounced." The fact that it occurs on it's own, at the beginning of a couple lines, leads me to think it's some sort of "Tershay" or marker that is not read...it occurs at the beginning of the part of the text relating to the practice of "development and offering" for raising windhorse, before the title...and then after the title, before the homage.

If you go here: http://www.thlib.org/reference/translit ... verter.php,
put T+kaMH in the box and hit the convert button you will find ཊྐཾཿ in the second box. You can then select and copy it and then paste it into a comment on this forum.

wisdomfire wrote:Dharmagoat, how did you input a tibetan character (unicode) here in the forum?

I generally use the freeware program BabelPad when doing anything with Unicode. Not only does it have an inbulit Wylie to Unicode converter, but it has a Character Map input feature as well.

dzogchungpa wrote:If you go here: http://www.thlib.org/reference/translit ... verter.php

This is very handy too.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with this:
http://dictionary.buddhistdoor.com/en/w ... 14/tamkara

dzogchungpa wrote:I'm wondering if it has something to do with this:
http://dictionary.buddhistdoor.com/en/w ... 14/tamkara

ཊྐཾ has all of the elements of the 'ṭaṃka' part, but not the 'ra'.

Also, (but I may be wrong) stacked letters in both native and Sanskritised TIbetan always part of a single syllable.

Edit: Excuse the excessive editing.

It may also be related to the homage which follows, which I think is:
Namo Guru Padma Manjushri Vajra Tikshnaya
This occurs in "White Lotus" by Mipham also:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/mtzlab5

dharmagoat wrote:

dzogchungpa wrote:I'm wondering if it has something to do with this:
http://dictionary.buddhistdoor.com/en/w ... 14/tamkara

ཊྐཾ has all of the elements of the 'ṭaṃka' part, but not the 'ra'.

Also, (but I may be wrong) stacked letters in both native and Sanskritised TIbetan always describe a single syllable.

It was just a guess, maybe the 'ka:' part is short for 'kara'. Also, isn't karmapa sometimes spelled ཀརྨ་པ་?

dzogchungpa wrote:It was just a guess, maybe the 'ka:' part is short for 'kara'. Also, isn't karmapa sometimes spelled ཀརྨ་པ་?

Yes, but the རྨ is one syllable. Dividing into syllables ཀརྨ་པ་ would be 'ka-rma-pa', although it is pronounced 'kar-ma-pa'.

As far as I know, རྨ is always part of a single syllable would never be pronounced 'rama' (or even 'ram') in any situation.

The groups of Tibetan letters separated by a tsek ( ་) are commonly referred to as syllables, but are more accurately named 'inter-tseks', as they sometimes describe more than one syllable, especially in Tibetanised Sanskrit.

dharmagoat wrote:Yes, but the རྨ is one syllable. Dividing into syllables ཀརྨ་པ་ would be 'ka-rma-pa', although it is pronounced 'kar-ma-pa'.

I'm not sure about that. I believe the 'karma' of 'karmapa' is the Sanskrit word 'karma', and the syllables are 'kar' and 'ma'. I'm not an expert though.

conebeckham wrote:I believe this is some sort of marker, and not actually "pronounced." The fact that it occurs on it's own, at the beginning of a couple lines, leads me to think it's some sort of "Tershay" or marker that is not read...it occurs at the beginning of the part of the text relating to the practice of "development and offering" for raising windhorse, before the title...and then after the title, before the homage.

Thanks Conebeckham, i think your view makes sense.

dzogchungpa wrote:I'm wondering if it has something to do with this:
http://dictionary.buddhistdoor.com/en/w ... 14/tamkara

I'm wondering too. But since it is something that repeats itself before and after the title, i think Cone's interpretation is quite sound.


Thank you to Dzogchungpa and Dharmagoat for your pointers on how to use the Unicode scripts, will save me some trouble in posting tibetan script in future...