What 𡸡 means
A cave or hollow in a mountain — nothing more. That is the definition the Kangxi Dictionary gives, citing the Yupian ('Jade Chapters'), a character dictionary first compiled under the Liang dynasty. A Yupian edition printed in the Yuan era (1271–1368) already writes the word in exactly this shape.
The shape reads like a little picture of the meaning: the mountain radical 山 on top, and below — where the standard 峇 writes 合, 'joined' — this form writes 含, 'held in the mouth': a mountain holding something inside. In strokes it is the heavier of the two, by two below the mountain.
Does anyone actually write 𡸡?
Practically no — the standard form 峇 does all the work. 𡸡 survives as a dictionary form, recorded from old prints; Unicode gave it a code point alongside the other rare attested characters, so texts that used it can be reproduced faithfully. It is a form on the record, not a word in living use.
峇 itself is still around, but mostly hired for its sound, not its meaning. Taiwan writes Bali as 峇里島, and Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese write the Baba Nyonya (Peranakan Chinese) as 峇峇娘惹. The 'mountain cave' sense lives on mainly in dictionaries; the syllable 'ba' keeps the character employed.
Who writes 𡸡
Loading…
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
2
Worth knowing
- The Yupian ('Jade Chapters') was completed in 543 under the Liang dynasty — among the oldest character dictionaries. The original is lost; it survives through fragments and much later editions like the Yuan print.
- Even the old 'cave' reading is unsettled — dictionaries give kē or kè — while living uses like Bali and Baba borrow the character purely for 'ba'.
Questions people ask
3How do you pronounce 𡸡?
It has no living reading of its own. The standard form 峇 is read bā where it writes Bali or Baba; for the old 'cave' sense, dictionaries give kē or kè.
Is 𡸡 used in Japanese or Korean?
Barely, and only on paper. Japanese reference data lists it with a reading, but it stands outside the everyday kanji and hanja sets; its home is the Chinese dictionary tradition.
Which should I write, 𡸡 or 峇?
Write 峇. It is the standard form — the one keyboards, fonts and readers are far more likely to have.
More like this
8
How to type or find 𡸡
- Search it as
- 峇 · cave · hollow · mountain cave · ba character · Bali character · baba nyonya · variant of 峇
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𡸡\21E21Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.