Chandrabindu

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Chandrabindu (IAST: candrabindu, lit. 'moon dot' in Sanskrit) is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali-Assamese (ঁ), Gujarati (ઁ), Odia (ଁ), Tamil (◌𑌁 Extension used from Grantha), Telugu (ఁ), Kannada (◌ಁ), Malayalam (◌ഁ), Sinhala (◌ඁ), Javanese ( ꦀ) and other scripts.

It usually means that the previous vowel is nasalized.

In Hindi, it is replaced in writing by anusvara when it is written above a consonant that carries a vowel symbol that extends above the top line.

In Classical Sanskrit, it seems to occur only over a lla conjunct consonant, to show that it is pronounced as a nasalized double l, which occurs if -nl- have become assimilated in sandhi.

In Vedic Sanskrit, it is used instead of anusvara to represent the sound anunasika when the next word starts with a vowel. It usually occurs where in earlier times a word ended in -ans.