U+0D3C "഼" Malayalam Sign Circular Virama Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
഼
U+0D3C "഼" Malayalam Sign Circular Virama is a combining mark used in the Malayalam script to indicate the suppression of the inherent vowel of a consonant, functioning as a virama. Unlike the standard virama used in other Brahmic scripts, this character is historically applied to a preceding consonant to create a distinct ligature or half-form, often appearing as a small circle above or to the side of the character. It is primarily encountered in older or traditional Malayalam orthography and in the representation of certain Sanskrit-derived conjuncts, where it helps denote a consonant without a following vowel in a manner specific to the script's typographic conventions.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+0D3C |
| Version Added | 10.0 |
| Name | Malayalam Sign Circular Virama |
| Block | Malayalam |
| General Category | Nonspacing Mark |
| Canonical Combining Class | Virama |
| Bidirectional Class | Nonspacing Mark |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ഼ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ഼ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE0 0xB4 0xBC |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x0D3C |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00000D3C |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u0d3c |