Avagraha 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, which is a sandhi of ‘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. This symbol is more frequently used in the Eastern Hindi and Bihari languages especially Bhojpuri language.