What ४ means
It developed through Brahmi, Gupta, and Nagari numeral traditions. Brahmi was an early Indian writing system. Its numerals, including a sign for four, appear on inscriptions and coins around the middle of the third century BCE. Gupta forms led to Nagari around the seventh century CE.
Early Brahmi notation was non-positional: each sign kept its value wherever it stood. Later, zero and place value made digits reusable; ४२ and २४ show how position changes ४’s value.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Can a font change how ४ looks?
Yes. Fonts, apps, and systems can change its outline; Unicode 16.0 documents this rendering variation. Its value remains four.
How to type ४
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 096A, then Alt+X to get ४.
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 “devanagari digit four”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 096a, then Enter or Space.
HTML
४CSS
\096ACodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
४
HTML hex
४
CSS content
content: "\096A";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E0%A5%AA
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.