Kundaliya: The Disappearance of a Sinhala Punctuation
Research into the historical disappearance of Kundaliya — the traditional Sinhala paragraph mark.
The Kundaliya (කුණ්ඩලිය) is a traditional Sinhala punctuation mark used historically as a paragraph and section delimiter in palm-leaf manuscripts and early printed texts. This research traces its gradual disappearance from Sinhala typography and the reasons behind it.
Research Questions
- When and why did the Kundaliya disappear from everyday Sinhala typography?
- What role did colonial printing presses play in standardising (and marginalising) Sinhala punctuation?
- Can the Kundaliya be revived in contemporary digital typography?
Findings
The Kundaliya’s disappearance is closely tied to the introduction of European printing conventions in Ceylon in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dutch and later British printers brought their own punctuation systems, gradually replacing indigenous conventions. As typefaces were cut for movable type, the Kundaliya was not included in early Sinhala metal type, leading to its near-complete disappearance from print by the 20th century.
The mark was presented at Typoday 2017 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where it was discussed as a case study in the typographic impact of colonialism on South Asian writing systems.
Unicode
The Kundaliya is encoded in Unicode (U+0DF4) and is technically available in digital typography, but remains unused in practice.