Avagraha

Avagraha (ऽ) is a symbol used to indicate prodelision of an अ (a) in many South Asian languages like Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्), Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Telugu, Hindi etc as shown below. It is usually transliterated with an apostrophe in Roman script and, in case of Devanagari, as in the Sanskrit philosophical expression शिवोऽहम् Śivo’ham (Śivaḥ aham), which is a sandhi of (शिवः + अहम्) ‘I am Shiva’. The avagraha is also used for prolonging vowel sounds in some languages, for example Hindi माँऽऽऽ! for ‘Mãããã!’ when calling to one’s mother, or when transliterating foreign words in instant messaging: for example, 'cool' can be transliterated as कूऽल.

In some languages specialy in poem in the last (…)three dots are used which is Alternative of this 'ಽ' symbol ,which indicates to elongate the word/letter.

In case of Hindi, the character is also sometimes used as a symbol to denote long or heavy syllables, in metrical poetry. For example, the syllables in the word छंदः chandaḥ ‘metre’ (in nominative) can be denoted as "ऽऽ", meaning two long syllables. (Cf. other notations in entry "Systems of scansion".)