Avagraha

Avagraha (ऽ) is a symbol used to indicate prodelision of an अ (a) in many Indian languages like Sanskrit 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 ‘Mā̃ā̃ā̃ā̃!’ when calling to one's mother, or when transliterating foreign words in instant messaging: for example, 'cool' can be transliterated as कूऽल. ^{[citation needed]}