Siddham Visarga

It marks a breathy sound after a Sanskrit vowel.

In Siddham, the visarga is a phonographic mark: it records post-vocalic aspiration and can reflect Sanskrit word-final sounds represented as s or r in Latin-letter transliteration. It belongs to the preceding syllable, not an independent Latin h.

The Siddham script developed in India around the 5th century for writing Sanskrit, including Buddhist texts. Palm-leaf manuscripts preserved at Hōryū-ji reached Japan from China in 609; this is evidence of the script’s transmission, not a birth date for this sign.

Someone sent me 𑖾 — what should I read?

Treat it as a Siddham sound mark; context supplies any ritual meaning.

Someone reading Sanskrit uses it as a sound mark. In the Japanese Buddhist traditions of Shingon and Tendai, it may appear within a mantra or seed syllable; ritual force belongs to that complete syllable and tradition, not automatically to 𑖾 alone.

From India, Siddham traveled through China and Korea to Japan. Besides Buddhist writing, it supported the study of Sanskrit sounds; Japanese monks also developed conventional mantra readings that can differ from historical Sanskrit pronunciation.

Why does 𑖾 show as a box?

A box means the font has no glyph for this character.

As of 2026, Unicode’s representative Siddham shapes follow Japanese usage; regional and historical forms are handled through fonts. Different fonts can draw the same character differently.

In a syllable, place visarga after the base and any preceding vowel marks. In the documented seed-syllable sequence 𑖁𑖼𑖾, visarga is last.