Brahmi Letter O

It is Brahmi’s independent letter for the vowel o. It writes a vowel on its own instead of adding one to a consonant.

The letter belongs to Brahmi’s inscriptional history. At Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, inscribed pottery fragments dated to the beginning of the fourth century BCE are among the earliest Brahmi examples discussed in a Cambridge archaeological study. The Archaeological Survey of India identifies Ashoka’s third-century BCE edicts as India’s earliest decipherable inscriptions.

Royal proclamations, donations, administration, and religious information appear in the surviving inscriptional record. Brahmi later developed regional forms that became modern writing systems including Tamil and Devanagari. Tamil-Brahmi adapted the script for Tamil: early forms did not distinguish the short and long e and o vowels, while in a later stage a dot called puḷḷi marked the short ones. Its special letter 𑁲 represents Old Tamil short O. Brahmi and the separate northwestern script Kharosthi are both thought to draw on the Aramaic alphabet, an ancient script from western Asia.

Why does 𑀑 show as a box?

A box usually means the active font lacks a Brahmi glyph. The character itself is unchanged; fonts that support Brahmi can draw it with different outlines.

Is 𑀑 the same as the vowel sign O?

No. The vowel sign attaches to a consonant. 𑀑 is an independent vowel letter; 𑁄 is the dependent Brahmi vowel sign for o.