Siddham letter Ṭa

It is Siddham’s retroflex ṭa, with an inherent a.

It marks the Sanskrit t made with the tongue tip curled slightly back; the bare letter adds an a vowel. A vowel sign changes that vowel. The virama, a mark that cancels the inherent vowel, leaves the consonant for a cluster or syllable end.

The Siddhamātr̥kā tradition—the mature Siddham writing tradition—is attested in northern Indian records from the sixth century. It developed from Gupta-era Brāhmī, an earlier Indian script, and served Sanskrit writing and syllable charts.

Why does Siddham appear in Buddhist texts?

It carried Sanskrit sounds into Buddhist manuscripts and ritual.

A manuscript from Dunhuang preserves a Sanskrit incantation in Siddham beside a line-by-line rendering in Sogdian, a Central Asian language. The example shows the script carrying Sanskrit sounds across Silk Road communities. In East Asia, preserving those sounds mattered even when the surrounding explanation was in another language.

Siddham is historically connected to Śāradā; later Nāgarī scripts grew from the wider northern Indian script family. In East Asia, Siddham became a lasting Buddhist ritual and calligraphic tradition.

Why does 𑖘 look different across fonts?

One encoded character can have different regional drawings.

Unicode brings regional Siddham forms into one encoded set, whose representative glyphs follow Japanese forms. Manuscripts and fonts from Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese traditions can draw the character differently. If the active font lacks Siddham coverage, it may display as a box.