North Indic Rupee Mark

It marked the rupee part of a multi-unit amount.

An anna and a pie were smaller money units in predecimal currency. In old accounts, the North Indic rupee mark split the notation: rupee digits and anna fractions usually came first, pie fractions after. Its position marked a currency unit, so it was not punctuation.

The notation appeared in several South Asian writing systems: Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Mahajani, Maithili, and Modi. “North Indic” here describes a shared accounting tradition across scripts, not one language. The wider family of fraction and amount signs is attested from at least the 16th century, with printed examples through 1970. Use of the old mark and fraction signs diminished after India switched to decimal currency in 1957.

What if ꠸ appears on its own?

Treat it as a historical accounting mark. Alone, it gives no price; it marked a position inside a multi-unit amount. In a transcription, preserve that role instead of replacing it with ₹.