What is the Burmese abbreviation marker?

[danbalogh]

The old TG says,
use an asterisk to represent the abbreviation marker, e.g. n* to transliterate ၌

@arlogriffiths, can you explain this to me or bring this thread to the attention of someone who can? If I try to identify the example glyph, it turns out to be U+104C : MYANMAR SYMBOL LOCATIVE - i.e. not a composite glyph.
What would be the separate graphs for <n> and for the abbreviation marker in the above glyph? What is the function of this abbreviation marker? Does it signify abbreviations (like Devanagari °) or is it something else? Is the curved stroke at the top of this glyph an instance of the Burmese virāma aka asat? If yes, why is it not transliterated explicitly as · ? Or is that actually the same as the abbreviation marker? If yes, then why don't we simply treat it as just another virāma?

I need some answers to these questions in order to be able to put this provision in the correct place in the reorganised TG.

[danbalogh]

We've had the following input from Christian Lammerts, pasted here with his consent:

There is no separate graph in Burmese for the “n” part of n* that is used to transliterate ၌ (which indeed yes is a locative symbol). The bottom part (beneath the virāma/asat-type sign) looks (in the modern script) like a backward ဠ (ḷa), but in fact it never occurs except in the case of this symbol, which itself stands for a word (နှိုက်, transliterated as nhuik, “in, on,” etc). It is just a symbol, similar to Bse ၏ (transliterated as e*) and ၍ (transliterated as r*) – and there are also a couple others used in Burmese inscriptions and mss that the transliteration guide Arlo and I developed does not mention. We just took over this convention of representing such symbols because it has been done this way using the asterisk for many years among scholars of Burmese. But I can see how such instances could appear awkward within a transliteration system that would deal with multiple Indic scripts, since there is actually no n involved in the case of ၌.