Sharada Letter Sa

𑆱 writes Sharada’s plain s; alone, it carries an unwritten a and reads sa. Sharada wrote Sanskrit and Kashmiri.

Text symbol

What 𑆱 means

It writes s; alone, it reads sa.

Sharada consonants carry an unwritten a; vowel signs change it and virama removes it. Before another consonant, virama can form a conjunct. Unicode 18.0 says font support determines whether the virama stays visible or the cluster joins.

Sharada developed from Gupta Brahmi through Kutila by the 8th century. The Bakhshali is an early mathematical manuscript in Sharada. In the 19th century, Arabic-script Kashmiri and Devanagari use helped marginalize it; Unicode 18.0 records limited ritual and horoscope use among Kashmiri Pandits.

Who writes 𑆱

Loading…

Don't confuse it with

𑆯

Sharada Letter Sha

Sharada sha is another sibilant, not the plain sa of 𑆱.

𑆰

Sharada Letter Ssa

Sharada ṣa is the retroflex sibilant, pronounced with the tongue curled back; 𑆱 is plain sa.

Questions people ask

Why does 𑆱 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.