Kawi Letter Ta

It writes the ta syllable, with the vowel a built in. Each Kawi consonant carries an inherent a. A dependent vowel sign changes it (𑼡𑼶 is transcribed as ti); the killer removes it. The conjoiner joins a following consonant into a stack, as in 𑼡𑽂𑼡.

Kawi developed from the Pallava script, a South Indian script in the Brahmi family. The oldest listed early-Kawi record is the Plumpungan stele, an inscribed stone dated c. 750 CE. From the 8th to the 16th centuries, Kawi was used to write Old Javanese, Sanskrit, Old Malay, Old Balinese, and Old Sundanese across Java, Bali, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines.

The Laguna Copperplate, a legal document from the Philippines dated 900 CE, preserves an early Kawi form. Later Javanese and Balinese scripts developed from Kawi; the transition toward Javanese took place over the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 21st century, people have also used Kawi on social media for modern Javanese and Indonesian. Unicode encoding followed in 2022.

Why does Kawi letter ta look different?

Kawi letterforms changed across regions and periods. The Unicode Standard's reference typeface for Kawi draws mainly on early inscriptions, with some glyphs adapted from later examples.