Bhaiksuki digit three

It is the decimal digit for three.

In decimal notation, 𑱓 writes the value three. Bhaiksuki also had a separate number system: unit and tens signs were stacked vertically, with larger values above smaller ones. In that system, 𑱜 is the sign for the number three.

Bhaiksuki is a Brahmi-derived script used from around the 10th to 13th centuries CE in the region of present-day Bihar, West Bengal, and northern Bangladesh. It wrote Middle Indic, also called Saindhavī, and survives in Buddhist manuscripts and inscriptions. Saindhavī (“Sindhu or Indus script”) is given as the script’s original name. After it became known to Western scholars in the late 19th century, they also called it Bhaiksuki or “Arrow-headed”; Sindhura was an older Tibetan designation.

Why does the Bhaiksuki three look different or disappear?

Its Unicode shape is provisional, and some fonts lack it.

When the script block was proposed in 2014, no decimal three had been identified in the available Bhaiksuki manuscripts. The proposal based its provisional three on the corresponding digit in two Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts held at Cambridge University Library. A future Bhaiksuki manuscript could reveal a distinct form.

A box or blank space means the font in your app does not cover Bhaiksuki. Choose a font with Bhaiksuki support to display it; that does not change the character’s value.