Sinhala Lith Digit Zero

It marks an empty place in a Lith number. Lith Illakkam is a historical Sinhala digit set used for astrological calculations, including horoscopes and ephemerides—tables of celestial positions. When ෦ follows another digit, that earlier digit counts in the tens place.

Sinhala numerals are linked to Brahmi, an ancient South Asian writing system; number forms of that tradition were recorded in Sri Lanka around the 1st–3rd centuries CE. The zero itself has disputed dating: one account places it in 17th-century astrological palm-leaf manuscripts; another dates the Lith Anka form to the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Where might ෦ appear in an old record?

The record tells you what ෦ is counting. Before the Kandyan kingdom in Sri Lanka fell, Lith digits supported general calculations. After 1815, the surviving tradition centered on horoscopes and zodiac positions marked in degrees and minutes; use is documented into the 20th century. The same digits also numbered some palm-leaf books, so ෦ can be a page number rather than a horoscope value.

Why do old Lith zero marks look different?

Manuscript forms and the encoded digit are not identical. Historical sources describe several Lith numeral forms. One zero form resembles the Sinhala hal-lakuna mark (්); short strokes distinguish some numeral signs from letters. The Unicode character ෦ does not reproduce every manuscript form.

Before Sinhala text was widely encoded in Unicode, some fonts assigned Sinhala glyphs to ordinary Latin-keyboard character positions. An old file using one of those fonts may show a zero-looking mark whose stored character is not ෦.