Brahmi Letter II

It is Brahmi’s full letter for the long-i vowel. It marks a long i sound at the start of a syllable; after a consonant, Brahmi uses dependent sign 𑀻. Brahmi consonants usually carry a built-in a vowel, so 𑀈 is not a mark added to an ordinary consonant.

Brahmi’s earliest dated examples include inscribed pottery fragments found at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, from the beginning of the fourth century BCE. Early evidence of long ī also appears in inscriptions from Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, and Haryana.

Related long-ī forms appear in Grantha, Malayalam, Sinhala, Kannada, and Telugu traditions. In Old Tamil Brahmi, consonants could lack their usual built-in vowel, so local spelling rules affected how vowels were written. Sent alone, 𑀈 reads as a Brahmi sample or transcription.

Why does 𑀈 look like four dots?

The four-dot reading is disputed. In 2016, a Unicode proposal argued that some four-dot forms in inscriptions mark short i plus a nasal sign, not long ī.

Unicode encodes the character; the selected font draws its shape. Regional and period styles can differ, and a font without Brahmi support may show an empty box.