Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c7.s3: § 3. Punctuation

c7.s3.1

The edicts of Açoka cannot be said to have any marks to indicate the close of a sentence, and the perpendicular stroke | is not much used in the inscriptions of the early centuries after the Christian era. In later ones single | and double || stroke both occur with precisely the same significations (either to mark the division in a verse, or to indicate the end of a sentence or paragraph) as in the northern documents.