What 𑼥 means
It starts a syllable with n plus an inherent a. Kawi consonants carry a default vowel. For 𑼥, that gives “na”; a dependent vowel sign changes the vowel, while a virama suppresses it.
Kawi developed gradually from the Pallava script, an older writing system from South Asia; late Pallava and early Kawi forms overlapped. The oldest known early-Kawi record is a stone inscription at Plumpungan, near Salatiga, from about 750 CE. Kawi was used across insular Southeast Asia from the 8th through the 16th centuries.
Kawi first appears in stone and copper-plate records, including land grants and royal orders. By the late first millennium it had also become a literary script, especially for Old Javanese works on palm leaves. It was used for Old Javanese, Sanskrit, Old Malay, Old Balinese, and Old Sundanese. Regional Kawi forms helped shape later scripts, including Javanese and Balinese. In the 21st century, renewed interest has included social-media writing of modern Javanese or Indonesian.
In a Kawi passage, 𑼥 is part of the writing; by itself, it reads as a letter sample rather than a message.
It is a specific Kawi letter, so using it as generic “ancient Asian” decoration mislabels it.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𑼥
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Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does 𑼥 look different in different fonts?
It can. Kawi letter shapes vary across regions and periods, and fonts draw from different attested styles; a different outline alone does not mean a different character.
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How to type or find 𑼥
- Search it as
- aksara kawi · kawi na · kawi script · kawi syllable · kawi font · Javanese script · Balinese script · Pallava script
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𑼥\11F25Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.