Visarga () means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology (), (also called, equivalently, by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as 'ః' Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa (at the end of an utterance). Since is a common inflectional suffix (of nominative singular, second person singular, etc.), visarga appears frequently in Sanskrit texts. In the traditional order of Sanskrit sounds, visarga and anusvāra appear between vowels and stop consonants. The precise pronunciation of visarga in Vedic texts may vary between Śākhās. Some pronounce a slight echo of the preceding vowel after the aspiration: will be pronounced , and will be pronounced . Visarga is not to be confused with colon. Types The visarga is commonly found in writing, resembling the punctuation mark of colon or as two tiny circles one above the other. This form is retained by most Indian scripts. According to Sanskrit phonologists, the visarga has two optional allophones, namely (jihvāmūlīya or the guttural visarga) and (upadhmānīya or the fricative visarga). The former may be pronounced before , , and the latter before , and , as in (tava pitāmahaḥ kaḥ?, 'who is your grandfather?'), (pakṣiṇaḥ khe uḍḍayante, 'birds fly in the sky'), (bhoḥ pāhi, 'sir, save me'), and (tapaḥphalam, 'result of penances'). They were written with various symbols, e.g. X-like symbol vs sideways 3-like symbol above flipped sideways one, or both as two crescent-shaped semi-circles one above the other, facing the top and bottom respectively. Distinct signs for jihavamulīya and upadhmanīya exists in Kannada, Tibetan, Sharada, Brahmi and Lantsa scripts. Other Brahmic scripts Burmese In the Burmese script, the visarga (variously called shay ga pauk, wizza nalone pauk, or shay zi and represented with two dots to the right of the letter as ), when used with joined to a letter, creates the high tone. Japanese Motoori Norinaga invented a mark for visarga which he used in a book about Indian orthography. Javanese In the Javanese script, the visarga (known as the wignyan ()) is represented by a two curls to the right of a syllable as : the first curl is short and circular, and the second curl is long. It adds a /-h/ after a vowel. Kannada In the Kannada script, the visarga (which is called visarga) is represented with two small circles to the right of a letter ಃ. It brings an "aḥ" sound to