Devanagari Sign Pushpika

It is a manuscript filler or divider.

In Unicode’s Vedic-text description, Pushpika is a placeholder or “filler,” commonly framed by double dandas (॥), a pair of vertical punctuation strokes. Manuscript studies use the Sanskrit name puṣpikā for related marks that divide chapters, colophons (notes at a text’s end), or larger sections.

A simple stylized ancestor appears in a manuscript from Bāmiyān, a region in Afghanistan, around the 2nd century. This is an early related form, not proof that this exact character was invented then; the tradition includes dots, circles, and floral designs.

Its flower name covers a wider tradition

Across Nepalese and North Indian manuscripts, puṣpikā marks appear at chapter or text endings, before or after a colophon, and sometimes after a speaker label. Some large floral forms are read as lotus-like decoration, so the tradition has no single fixed design or symbolism.

Unicode describes the encoded Devanagari sign as a filler; manuscript studies use puṣpikā more broadly for related Buddhist, Nepalese, and North Indian marks that divide text. Unicode discussions also compare such practices in the Newa, Nandinagari, Kannada, and Tigalari scripts. A Tigalari proposal names a different-looking form OM ALANKAARA; these are connections between traditions, not interchangeable characters.