Tirhuta Letter Sha

It is a Tirhuta consonant that begins a syllable. Its sound resembles “sh” at the start of “ship.” In a word, it carries an unwritten “a” unless a vowel sign changes that vowel; a virama (a mark that removes the inherent vowel) leaves the consonant without it.

Tirhuta’s earliest surviving records are 13th-century temple inscriptions in Bihar and Nepal. By the 14th century, the script carried Maithili and Sanskrit scholarship and religious writing; Maithil Brahmins also used it for pañjī, genealogies that record family lines. Printing in Maithili began in the 1920s, and Devanagari formally replaced Tirhuta in the 1950s.

Tirhuta developed through the Brahmi, Kutila, and Gaudi script traditions; Bengali, Newari, and Oriya grew in related eastern Indic traditions. These links explain family resemblances between letters, but the scripts have distinct characters. As everyday Maithili writing shifted to Devanagari in the 1950s, Tirhuta became more associated with literary, ritual, and heritage writing.

Someone sent me Tirhuta Sha alone—what is it?

A lone 𑒬 identifies one letter; its word-level meaning needs context. If you need the word’s meaning, ask for the surrounding Tirhuta text.

How to type Tirhuta Sha?

Use GTK’s Unicode entry: Ctrl+Shift+U, 114AC, then Space or Enter.

On macOS, use Character Viewer. As of 2026, the direct Unicode Hex Input method accepts only four hexadecimal digits, so it cannot enter this five-digit value directly.