Devanagari letter Cha

It is the breathy partner of च. In Hindi pronunciation, छ is the aspirated counterpart of च: pronounce the “ch” sound, then release a clear puff of air. A lone छ is only a letter or syllable fragment, so the word around it supplies the meaning.

Devanagari developed through Brahmi-derived scripts, including Gupta and Siddhamātrikā forms. The earliest decipherable Indian Brahmi inscriptions are Ashoka’s edicts from the 3rd century BCE; Nāgarī developed in North India from the 10th century CE. These dates describe the script’s record and development, not the first appearance of this exact छ shape. These scripts wrote Prakrit, Sanskrit, and later vernacular languages, so the letter represented speech rather than an idea or picture.

The shared Devanagari inventory serves Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, and other traditions, but language context shapes how a letter is read. Hindi-oriented transliteration may write it as chha or chh; Sanskrit IAST writes cha. These are pronunciation conventions, not separate characters.