What ꣠ means
It marks a vowel whose length is kept unchanged.
Rāṇāyanīya Sāmagāna is one tradition for singing the Sāmaveda. In its notation, ꣠ sits over the syllable it modifies.
The encoding proposal groups ꣠ with marks used in the Kauthuma and Rāṇāyanīya traditions of Sāmaveda notation, two chant traditions, and cites Wayne Howard’s 1977 study. Other marks in that set record tones and recitation gestures.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ꣠ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ꣠
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType A8E0, then Alt+X to get ꣠.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “combining devanagari digit zero”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType a8e0, then Enter or Space.
HTML
꣠CSS
\A8E0Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
꣠
HTML hex
꣠
CSS content
content: "\A8E0";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%EA%A3%A0
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.