Sundanese Digit Five

The bars frame the numeral; they are not part of ᮵. A Sundanese number is written between vertical bars, as in |᮵|, because some numeral forms can resemble letters. In older palm-leaf manuscripts, numeral signs could sit in the left margin, outside the main text.

The Sundanese script descends from Pallava, a South Indian script, and ultimately from Brahmi, an early Indian script. The Kawali stone inscription is the earliest documented example of Old Sundanese, used from the 14th to 18th centuries. In later periods, Sundanese was also written in Javanese, Arabic, and Latin scripts.