Avestan Small Two Dots over One Dot Punctuation

It marks a middle-strength boundary in Avestan punctuation.

In the three-dot Avestan punctuation sequence, 𐬻 is the semicolon-level step: 𐬺 marks a colon-like break, and 𐬼 ends a sentence. The signs mark increasing finality, not interchangeable decoration.

Avestan is the language of Zoroastrian sacred texts. Its script was shaped in Sasanian Iran, probably by the fourth century, to record sound distinctions in texts long transmitted orally. Manuscripts survive from Iran and India; the earliest surviving Avestan manuscript dates to 1288. The script’s ancestry runs through Pahlavi to Aramaic, but that does not establish that this punctuation mark itself came from those scripts.

Why do editions handle the dots differently?

Older manuscript punctuation and later editorial punctuation differ. Avestan manuscripts use dots and grouped marks for larger pauses, but not as one consistent system.

In 1880, Karl F. Geldner’s edition made the colon, semicolon, and sentence-ending scale systematic. The Unicode Standard follows that editorial convention.

A 2008 Unicode proposal notes that P. O. Skjaervo’s font used a single dot and a three-dot mark, while other systems preserved more differences in dot size. A specimen may therefore blur the distinction; check its font or edition before treating it as a different sign.

Can I use it as an ordinary semicolon?

No. Keep it for Avestan text or discussion of the script. Outside that context, readers may not recognize why you chose a script-specific punctuation mark; an ordinary semicolon is clearer.