Another Mystery for us at Goodwill

[ironlord1963]

    We have what appears to be a very old Religious Book / Text   That was donated to use, and we are in need of information or leads that may answer the question of what it is.   It appears to be on some really early paper, very rough and fiberous, and written in a language we are not familiar with.  It is several pages and has a cloth and hand tied Binding on the top.  It is 21" x 14" in size, and condition is poor.  Anyway hope someone can help us, this appears to be something special  

[ironlord1963]

3 more Pics

[bigwull]

Its quite possible that the paper..is Parchment...or maybe Vellum...as for translating...could you not scan it into an online translation service...that auto translates...i use this one...http://www.bing.com/translator

[frogpatch]

Any clue to where it came from (who donated it) and was anything else with it?

[ironlord1963]

    First not sure We can scan it as it is very fragile. and no we have no clues to where it came from.   One thing for sure we think this could be worth a few $$$.00  If we can get enough clues to post it. 

[bigwull]

As you were able to post pics on here.. why don,t you print off the pics A4 size then scan them that should be easy enough...

[ironlord1963]

    I guess I am not quite understanding how this works yet, The site need a web address apparently, I may be able to get some better pics today and go home and work on this, but being at work right now I have limited time. 

[kesgill]

I can be fairly certain that it is not Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Arabic or any language derived from them.  My best guess would be a type of brahmic writing (coming from India, but used throughout South/SE Asia - my line of work brings me there fairly often, so it looked familiar).  I would suggest looking into Burmese, Shan, Cham, Lao, or possibly Malaysian, first.

[ironlord1963]

   O.k. after spending some time I am starting to think this Burmese, still can't figure out how to Translate using the net, no even sure which side is up yet. It is possible that this is hanging upside down.   anyway I will keep looking and hope I can get enough information to make a good post. 

[greenacres]

Do you use a Google browser? If you do click on more. There is a translation tab.

[bigwull]

It can be translated...if you upload these pics to your PC...then copy and paste them on to the translation site that i gave

[KC]

Do you have a university with a language department near you?

[rockandrollrods]

There is a slim possiblity that it could be Hebrew.

[ironlord1963]

      First Bigwull I did try and it came up as it was not able to translate, I will try and get some better photos today and try again.  KC I did write the University of Washington Language Dept. last night have not heard back yet.   Also email a local Buddist Temple too maybe they can help, don't think it is Hebrew, just does not look right.  Still think it is Burmese, but being hand written it can be hard to tell from us unexperience.  Thanks for all the help Thus far, really need to pin this one down before we post it for sure.

[frogpatch]

I asked the question to one of my writers groups on LinkedIn. It is a global community of English speaking writers. My friend Parsi from India had this opinion. It will give a couple clues where to look.

 "Certainly not Sanskrit. It could be Thai, Burmese, or Sinhalese (Sri Lanka). If you note the flow of the characters, they are circular in nature. Sanskrit, on the other hand, uses quite a lot of straight lines. This is why it is tough to write in Sanskrit on papyrus."