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| Candrabindu | |
|---|---|
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| Example glyphs | |
| Bengali–Assamese | ঁ |
| Tibetan | ྃ |
| Malayalam | ഁ |
| Ashoka Brahmi | 𑀀 |
| Devanagari | ँ
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| Properties | |
| Phonemic representation | /-/ |
| IAST transliteration | m̐ M̐ |
| ISCII code point | A1 (161) |
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| Vowels | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Other marks | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Punctuation | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chandrabindu (Sanskrit: चन्द्रबिन्दु; IAST: candrabindu, lit. 'moon dot') is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (ঁ), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Tamil (◌𑌁 Extension used from Grantha), Telugu (ఁ), Kannada (◌ಁ), Malayalam (◌ഁ), Sinhala (◌ඁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other scripts.
It usually means that the previous vowel is nasalized.
In Hindi, it is replaced in writing by anusvara when it is written above a consonant that carries a vowel symbol that extends above the top line.
In Classical Sanskrit, it seems to occur only over a lla, yya, or vva conjunct consonant, to show that it is pronounced as a nasalized double l, y, or v which occurs if they have become assimilated in sandhi.
In Vedic Sanskrit, it is used instead of anusvara to represent the sound anunasika when the next word starts with a vowel. It usually occurs where in earlier times a word ended in -ans.
