Bengali Sign Anusvara

It marks the syllable-final “ng” consonant. In বাংলা, ং gives the nasal sound at the end of the first syllable. It stays on the consonant side and cannot take the inherent vowel, the short vowel a Bengali consonant can carry without an added vowel sign. If the nasal starts a vowel-bearing syllable, Bengali uses ঙ. In a consonant cluster, anusvara can also stand for the nasal that matches the following consonant.

The Bengali script grew from Brahmi through Kutila, and its recognizable alphabet took shape across the 11th and 12th centuries. A study of old writing records earlier anusvara forms as dots or circles in the Bodh-Gayā, Gadādhara, and Torpondighi records; a form closer to today’s appears in the Kamauli land-grant inscription and Cambridge manuscripts. Sanskrit and related Indic spelling traditions give anusvara broader nasal roles; Bengali settled on the syllable-final “ng” use described here.

Why does ং shift in different fonts?

The same text can appear with the mark in a different position.

Unicode's Indic-script model attaches Bengali ং relative to the syllable core, while the shaping engine chooses the font's visible glyph. A shift in placement is a rendering difference, not a different Bengali character.