Tangut character 𗵮

A Tangut dictionary glosses it as “god.”

That short English gloss does not mean the Tangut word matches every culture’s idea of a deity. Read it in its Tangut sentence: it can name a divine being or appear in a passage discussing the word.

The Tangut script was created under the first emperor of Western Xia, a state in northwestern China, around 1036 for official and cultural writing.

Does 𗵮 have a religious meaning when sent?

The glyph alone does not reveal the sender’s intent.

Its dictionary gloss is “god,” but seeing the character by itself does not make a message an invocation. The surrounding words and what the sender is discussing matter.

Western Xia fell in 1227, but Tangut writing continued. Two stone pillars erected at Baoding in 1502 bore Buddhist dhāraṇī inscriptions, short sacred texts. That history belongs to the Tangut writing tradition; it does not establish a special modern meaning for this character.

Why does 𗵮 look different in some fonts?

One character can have more than one recorded glyph form.

The BabelStone listing gives a regular form and a Tongyin B form for the same code point. These are recorded font or source forms of one character, not two separate meanings. Tangut characters can resemble Chinese characters, but Tangut is a distinct script.

Traditionally, Tangut was written in vertical columns read from top to bottom, with columns arranged right to left. When scholars break 𗵮 into written parts, those parts describe its structure rather than providing a dependable translation. If it appears as a square, the chosen font lacks Tangut support.