Cham Letter Ssa

ꨦ is the Cham consonant identified by the Latin transliteration “ssa.” It contributes a consonant to a Cham spelling; the surrounding vowel signs and final marks help form a written syllable.

The oldest Cham writing commonly cited is the Đông Yên Châu inscription, dated c. 350 CE and written in Pallava, an Indic script used in Southeast Asia. Its brief text asks for protection for a royal nāga, a serpent deity, at a well. Pallava belongs to the wider script tradition that later included Akhar Thrah; this inscription dates early Cham writing, not ꨦ itself.

Akhar Thrah is the traditional Eastern Cham script in which ꨦ is used. Its earliest known appearance is an inscription at Po Romé tower dated to the 17th century; later Akhar Thrah manuscripts on palm leaves carried religious texts used in temple ceremonies. A 2022 Unicode proposal describes Western Cham as a related but distinct tradition, using Ka-Kha, an Indic script, or Jawi, a script based on Arabic.

How do I type ꨦ?

In the iCham Akhar Thrah guide, ss or sh gives ꨦ. A single s may give ꨧ instead. If the converter commits only when you enter a space or punctuation, finish the word before checking the output.

Akhar Thrah writes syllables with a consonant and its vowel signs, so ꨦ alone may not form a complete syllable.

Fonts can draw the same encoded letter with different glyph shapes; its appearance may change while the character stays ꨦ.