Danda

In the Devanāgarī script, the danda (Sanskrit daṇḍa "stick") is a punctuation character. The glyph consists of a single vertical stroke. The character can be found at code point U+0964 (।) in Unicode. The "double danda" is at U+0965 (॥). ISCII encodes danda at 0xEA.

The danda marks the end of a sentence or period, comparable to a full stop (period) as commonly used in the Latin alphabet. In metrical texts, a double danda is used to delimit verses, and a single danda to delimit a pada or semi-verse.

Use in other scripts

The danda (with the same Unicode encoding) has also been used as a full stop in the scripts of several other Indic languages, including Bengali (pronounced as দাঁড়ি / dari) , Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Hindi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. However, Western punctuation has largely replaced it in contemporary orthography.

Etymology

The word daṇḍa literally means "stick, staff, rod, pole, cudgel, club", and is also used in the sense of "tusk", "trunk", "stalk, stem", or "handle".

Daṇḍa (Hindu punishment)

Daṇḍa (Sanskrit: दण्ड) is the Hindu equivalent of punishment. In ancient India, punishments were generally sanctioned by the ruler, but other legal officials could also play a part. The punishments that were handed out were in response to criminal activity. In the Hindu law tradition, there is a counterpart to daṇḍa which is prāyaścitta, or atonement. Where as daṇḍa is sanctioned primarily by the king, prāyaścitta is taken up by a person upon his or her own volition. Furthermore, daṇḍa provides a way for an offender to right any violations of dharma that he or she may have committed. In essence, daṇḍa functions as the ruler's tool to protect the system of life stages and castes. Daṇḍa makes up a part of vyavahāra, or legal procedure, which was also a responsibility afforded to the king.

Purpose of Daṇḍa

There were two main purposes for punishment in Hindu society. Incapacitation was the first purpose and was used to ensure that an offender would not be able to commit the same crime again. For example, the hands of a thief would be cut off. Deterrence was the second purpose of punishment. Criminals were punished to set an example to the public, in hopes of preventing future offenses. Although these were the two main purposes of Hindu Law, other purposes such as rehabilitation were used as means of punishment and correction. Retribution is another theory of punishment; however, it does not have a prevalent role in Hindu punishment.