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Published February 10, 2026 | Version v3
Preprint Open

The Voynich Manuscript Deciphered: A Phonetic Transcription of Spoken Elu-Sinhala

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Independent Researcher

Description

The Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS 408, carbon-dated 1404-1438 CE) is identified as a 15th-century Elu-Sinhala pharmaceutical text - a teaching manual recording a physician's spoken instructions for Ayurvedic preparations. The writing system is a bespoke abugida mapping 27 EVA characters to 14 Sinhala phonemes.

Key results: 90.9% of 35,916 tokens glossable in English (32,646 tokens); 99.4% matching Sinhala dictionary (Tier 1+2+3); only 0.6% truly unknown (213 tokens); domain clustering in pharmaceutical vocabulary at 101.2x over random (Z=52.7); 24 independent converging evidence lines, combined p << 10^-7.

Includes the full paper (PDF) and the complete 4,591-entry decoded vocabulary (TSV) with English glosses, confidence levels, and Sinhala phonetic forms.

v2 changes: Added cross-language phonotactic validation (CV-pattern analysis against 6 languages), rule-freezing and pre-registration equivalent documentation, and a 7-step hostile replication protocol for independent falsification.

Notes

Free for personal and academic research. Commercial use requires written permission. Contact: kameldipbasra@gmail.com. GitHub: https://github.com/kamb-code/Voynich

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