What ௫ means
It is the Tamil written numeral for five.
A pottery inscription from Alagankulam gives evidence of Tamil numerals in the 1st or 2nd century CE. A Tondur cave inscription, dated about the 3rd century CE, records a gift of three stone beds to Jaina monks.
Traditional Tamil numerals served counting, arithmetic, measuring, and keeping accounts. Earlier scripts in Tamil's writing history include Tamil-Brahmi and Vatteluttu.
Don't confuse it with
4Combination ideas
1Fifteen in traditional Tamil numeral notation.
Questions people ask
1Why does ௫ 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.
How to type ௫
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 0BEB, then Alt+X to get ௫.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “tamil digit five”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 0beb, then Enter or Space.
HTML
௫CSS
\0BEBTamil Standard keyboard
How to type ௫: enable Tamil Standard and use right Alt + 5; Tamil99 and Typewriter use different key mappings.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
௫
HTML hex
௫
CSS content
content: "\0BEB";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E0%AF%AB
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.