Dives Akuru Letter Da

Use an installed Dives Akuru keyboard or system Unicode input. The input tool must accept U+1191D, and displaying the character needs a font with Dives Akuru coverage.

In Dives Akuru, a consonant normally carries the short vowel a, so 𑤝 represents the syllable da. A following vowel sign changes that vowel; the halanta, a mark that cancels the vowel, usually removes it. Conjuncts join consonants into clusters.

Through Grantha, Dives Akuru descends from Brahmi; it is closest to medieval Sinhala and shares traits with Tigalari. Landū’s oldest-known inscription (6th–8th centuries), on coral, is Grantha; distinctive Dives Akuru appears on Māle Buddhist statues (9th–10th centuries). The 12th-century conversion from Buddhism to Islam destroyed records, so consistent writing begins then. 1194 copper mosque grants record building and upkeep; by the 16th century, paper and wooden decrees, chronicles, epitaphs, carvings, and pottery appear. Thaana appears early 18th century; Dives Akuru remains in some official use until 1870, but Thaana replaces it as regular Dhivehi script by the turn of the 19th century.

Why can Dives Akuru look different in different fonts?

Fonts can show different historical shapes for the same encoded letter. The older Dives Akuru style, evēla akuru, covers the 12th–14th centuries; the later style, after the 14th century, is called dives akuru. H. C. P. Bell coined evēla akuru in 1919 as a label meaning “the script of that time.” Fonts can preserve source-specific variants without changing the letter’s identity.