Malayalam Digit Three

It is a numeral for three. Malayalam numeral signs derive from Grantha, an older South Indian script, and resemble Tamil numerals. Malayalam writing took distinct shape around 700 CE; by 1000 CE, its numbers combined signs for units and larger values.

A University of Kerala palm-leaf manuscript, possibly from the 18th century, uses these signs in its margins for page numbers. Malayalam writers used the system until the mid-nineteenth century, when European contact brought zero and place-value notation (position sets each digit's value). ൩ still meant three.