Hindu Symbols & Emoji

The Om 🕉️ is the Hindu symbol people look for first. It writes the syllable a-u-m, chanted at the start of mantras and prayers and described in the Upanishads as the sound of everything that is. The emoji came in Unicode 7.0 in 2014; the text form ॐ is older and is simply a Devanagari character, so it sits in any font that has Hindi and matches the size and colour of the surrounding text. That makes ॐ the better choice for a name, a bio or a tattoo mock-up, and 🕉️ the better one for a coloured icon in a message.

Om has a shape in each script of India. ॐ is the Devanagari one used across North India and in Sanskrit; ૐ is Gujarati, ௐ is Tamil (added to Unicode in 2008), and ༀ is the Tibetan Om of Om mani padme hum. ꣽ is the Jain Om, which looks different because it stands for the five supreme beings of Jainism rather than the three sounds. The two little marks over ॐ are the chandrabindu, the moon and dot that in Hindu reading stand for the silence after the sound.

The Om is often written inside a mantra with the Devanagari full stops: ॥ ॐ नमः शिवाय ॥, ॐ गं गणपतये नमः, ॐ शांति शांति शांति. The single danda । ends a line of verse and the double danda ॥ closes it, which is why Hindi wishes on WhatsApp are often framed as ॥ जय श्री राम ॥.

Hindu symbols and meanings: swastik, trishul, chakra and lotus

The swastik 卐 is a mark of well-being; in Sanskrit svasti means good fortune. It is drawn in red at the door for a housewarming and on the first page of account books at Diwali, usually right-facing with a dot in each quarter, which is exactly ࿗. Unicode has six forms: 卐 and 卍 are Chinese characters (the wàn of ten thousand), and ࿕ ࿖ ࿗ ࿘ are the Tibetan svasti signs added in 2009. The right-facing one is the usual Hindu form; the left-facing 卍 is more common in Buddhist use and marks temples on Japanese maps. Outside South Asia the shape is read as the Nazi emblem, which is normally tilted, so many people keep 卐 for Hindi-language or family groups and use 🕉️ or 🪔 in public posts.

The trishul 🔱 is Shiva's trident and the sign of Mahadev; the same emoji is Poseidon's trident and the Ukrainian tryzub, so it reads as Hindu mainly in company with 🐍 🌙 or 🕉️. The wheel 🛞 stands in for the Sudarshana chakra of Vishnu, since there is no chakra emoji; the eight-spoked wheel of dharma ☸️ is Buddhist first, but is also used for dharma in the broad sense. The dotted six-pointed star 🔯 is the shatkona, two triangles for Shiva and Shakti, the shape at the centre of many yantras.

The lotus 🪷 is the flower of Lakshmi and of purity, rising clean out of mud; it has had its own emoji only since 2021, and 🌺 🌸 were the stand-ins before that. The bell 🔔 and the conch 🐚 open a puja, the diya 🪔 carries the flame of aarti, and 📿 is the mala of 108 beads used for japa. For a tilak or bindi there is no emoji, and the hibiscus 🌺 is the flower offered to Kali and Ganesha.

Hindu god emoji: Mahadev, Ganesh, Krishna and their animals

There is no emoji for any Hindu god, so a deity is written as the things that belong to it, and the symbol grid above is arranged that way. Mahadev (Shiva) is 🔱 🐍 🌙, the trident, the snake Vasuki around his neck and the crescent in his hair, with 🏔️ for Kailash, 💧 🌊 for the Ganga falling from his locks, 🍃 for bilva leaves and 🐂 for Nandi the bull. Ganesha is 🐘 with his mouse 🐁 and a sweet 🍬 for the modak he holds. Krishna is the flute 🪈, the peacock feather 🪶, the cow 🐄 and butter 🧈, the makhan he stole as a child, with 🦚 for his feather's bird.

Lakshmi is the lotus 🪷, gold coins 🪙 and the owl 🦉, her vehicle in Bengal. Saraswati is the swan 🦢 and the book 📖, and 🎶 for her veena. Durga rides the lion 🦁 or, as Sherawali, the tiger 🐅. Vishnu rides the eagle Garuda 🦅 and holds the conch 🐚; his ten avatars give a row of their own: the fish 🐟 Matsya, the tortoise 🐢 Kurma, the boar 🐗 Varaha, the lion 🦁 Narasimha, the axe 🪓 of Parashurama, the bow 🏹 of Rama, the flute 🪈 of Krishna and the horse 🐎 of Kalki. Hanuman is the monkey 🐒, Kartikeya (Murugan) the peacock 🦚, and Surya the sun 🌞 drawn by seven horses 🐎, greeted at sunrise 🌅 with the Gayatri mantra and the Chhath puja.

The saffron colour belongs to renunciation and to the bhagwa flag flown over temples, which is why the orange heart 🧡 and the triangular flag 🚩 are so common in Hindu bios and handles. The Indian flag 🇮🇳 and the Nepali 🇳🇵, the two countries where Hinduism is the majority faith, round that off.

Puja emoji: lamp, flowers, prasad and the things of worship

A puja in emoji follows the order of a real one. 🙏 is the namaste and the folded hands of prayer; 🤲 is the open palms for receiving prasad or aarti, 🙌 the raised hands of a bhajan. 🛕 is the mandir with its shikhara tower (Unicode 12.0, 2019, together with the diya 🪔 and the sari 🥻), 🛐 the neutral place of worship, and 🧘 the lotus seat of meditation and yoga, which in Sanskrit is padmasana.

Then the offerings. Flowers: marigolds, for which the yellow blossom 🌼 is the nearest match, a garland 💐 🏵️, roses 🌹 and the lotus. Leaves: tulsi 🌿 for Vishnu and Krishna, bilva 🍃 for Shiva, and mango leaves 🥭 strung across the door as a toran. Food: a coconut 🥥 broken before the deity, bananas 🍌, rice 🍚 as akshat, and the panchamrit of milk 🥛, honey 🍯, ghee 🧈 and sugar poured over the idol. The flame of the aarti is 🪔 or 🕯️, the havan fire is 🔥, and there is no incense emoji, so ✨ usually stands for the smoke and the light together.

Protection is its own set of Hindu symbols: the nazar 🧿 against the evil eye, called buri nazar in Hindi, the hamsa 🪬, and the red kalava or mauli thread 🧵 tied around the wrist at a puja, the same thread that becomes a rakhi on Raksha Bandhan. A lemon and chillies hung at a shop door are written 🍋🌶️.

Hindu symbols text copy and paste: typing ॐ and the other signs

Every text symbol on this page copies with a tap. To type ॐ yourself, switch the phone keyboard to Hindi: Gboard and the iPhone Hindi transliteration keyboard both suggest ॐ when you type om, and the Devanagari layout has it among the signs. 卐 and 卍 are easiest to find through a Chinese keyboard by typing wan, and ࿗ with its dots only comes from a copy like this one. On a computer there is no Alt code for any of them; use the system character map, or paste from here.

Fonts decide what you will see. ॐ, ૐ and ௐ need a font with that script, which every phone has; ༀ needs Tibetan, which iPhone and most Android phones have and some older Windows PCs do not. 🕉️ and 🔱 are emoji and look different on iPhone, Android and WhatsApp, which draws its own set. For Instagram bios and stylish names people combine the text forms with flourishes, as in ✿ ॐ ✿ or ॥ ॐ नमः शिवाय ॥, since symbols like ✿ ❀ stay the same size as the letters around them.