Siddham Separator Dot

It marks boundaries between Siddham syllables, words, or phrases. Siddham is a script used in Buddhist manuscripts; this dot is punctuation within a line, not a standalone emblem. In horizontal writing, it sits at the height of the letter tops; vertical layouts use a corresponding vertical form.

Siddhamātṛkā and Kuṭila are names for related forms of the script, which grew from writing used in Gupta-period India. Inscriptions there show those forms from the sixth through about tenth centuries; related scripts later developed toward Śāradā, Proto-Bengali (Gauḍi), and Nāgarī.

Historically, Siddham appears in Buddhist manuscripts from India, China, Korea, and Japan. A published example of this separator appears in Lokesh Chandra's 1965 work. A 1972 text also uses an ordinary middle dot to divide words or phrases, so the job alone does not distinguish the marks; their vertical placement does.

How do I type the Siddham separator dot?

Use * in the community bonji-input tool. That mapping belongs to the tool, not to Unicode or an ordinary keyboard layout. For a Siddham passage, follow the boundary placement shown in its source; the generic middle dot is not an interchangeable substitute.