What ॆ means
It marks a short e on the consonant before it. This e-mātrā depends on a consonant rather than standing alone: क ॆ forms कॆ.
Bihari spellings, Kashmiri, and some Dravidian-language transcription use it when their convention needs short e. Standard Sanskrit treats ए as long, so ॆ is not its usual short counterpart.
Why was this mark made?
It records a short-e contrast used by some writing traditions. Hoernle's 1880 Devanagari chart and Grierson's 1903 Linguistic Survey of India record short-vowel forms; a 2015 Unicode proposal compares them while discussing encoding.
A separate Vedic clue concerns pronunciation, not the age of this exact written sign. A 1957 study reports a discussion in the Mahābhāṣya, a Sanskrit grammatical work, that some Sāmaveda reciters—people chanting a Vedic text—pronounced a short e.
How do I type ॆ after a consonant?
Enter the consonant first, then the dependent sign. A sequence such as कॆ keeps them together as one syllable.
Text stores the sign after its base even if the font places it elsewhere. On its own, ॆ may appear detached or with a dotted circle, a display aid for a combining sign without a base.
It signals a language-specific short-e spelling or transcription convention, not a standalone expressive symbol.
Do not use it to shorten ordinary Sanskrit ए.
Who writes ॆ
Loading…
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ॆ show a dotted circle by itself?
On its own, ॆ has no consonant base to attach to. The dotted circle is a display aid for an isolated combining mark; in a syllable, the sign follows its consonant.
More like this
10
How to type or find ॆ
- Also called
- short e · ardha ekāra
- Search it as
- short e matra · e-matra · ekara · hrasva e · Kashmiri · Bihari · Bhojpuri · Magahi
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ॆ\0946Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.