What ꒛ means
It helps locate Yi syllables in a radical-stroke index. As a Yi radical, ꒛ is a structural key: a reader matches a syllable's shape to a radical, then counts the strokes left over to find the dictionary entry and its reading. It is not a full syllable itself.
In the Nuosu Yi tradition, priests known as bi-mox used the script for religious texts, legends, history, medicine, and astrology. Standardization later brought Yi writing into school materials and practical public use. Regional traditions differ in character shapes and readings. Among the earliest reliably dated surviving examples are inscriptions on a 15th-century bell in Guizhou, China. The bell dates the wider Yi writing tradition, not this radical in isolation.
It signals a Yi-script reference context: this radical helps readers find syllable entries.
By itself, ꒛ is an index component, not a complete Yi syllable.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ꒛ 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 ꒛
꒛\A49BCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.