The Khanda (β¬ πͺ―) β the Sikh emblem of the double-edged sword, chakkar, and two crossed kirpans β plus Ik Onkar, the separate symbol it's often confused with. Click any symbol to copy it instantly.
The Khanda is the emblem of modern Sikhism: a double-edged sword (also called a khanda) at the center, framed by a circular chakkar, with two curved kirpans crossed underneath representing miri-piri β the unity of spiritual and temporal authority. It's not the same symbol as Ik Onkar (ΰ©΄), the phrase for "One Creator" that appears on gurdwaras and the Guru Granth Sahib, and Unicode gives it two different codepoints depending on whether you want the plain dingbat or the full-color emoji.
Two ways to render the Khanda in Unicode: the plain-text dingbat and the dedicated color emoji added in 2022.
Ik Onkar ("One Creator") is the older, separate Gurmukhi character used on gurdwaras and the opening line of the Guru Granth Sahib. It is never interchanged with the Khanda in religious use.
The Khanda's current form β a double-edged sword (also called a khanda) at the center, framed by a circular chakkar, with two curved kirpans crossed underneath β took shape around the 1930s, during the Ghadar Movement. The two kirpans represent miri-piri, the Sikh principle that spiritual authority and temporal (worldly) authority are unified rather than separate. The Khanda decorates the Nishan Sahib (the Sikh flag) and is used widely as a Sikh identity emblem, but it is never written into or placed on a physical copy of the Guru Granth Sahib itself.
That last point is what trips people up: Ik Onkar (ΰ©΄), a Gurmukhi character meaning "One Creator," is the older and religiously distinct symbol that does appear on gurdwaras and on the opening page of the Guru Granth Sahib. The Khanda and Ik Onkar are both instantly recognizable Sikh symbols, but they aren't interchangeable β one is a scriptural phrase, the other is a modern identity emblem. A third, less common symbol, the aad chand (a khanda sword inside a crescent moon), is sometimes confused with the standard Khanda but is a distinct variant.
Unicode further splits the Khanda glyph itself into two code points. U+262C, officially named "Adi Shakti" in the Unicode standard, has represented the symbol in plain text since Unicode's early Miscellaneous Symbols block and renders as a simple monochrome glyph. U+1FAAF KHANDA, added in Unicode 15.0 (2022), is a dedicated color emoji β Unicode's newer policy is to give symbols like this their own code point rather than an emoji variant of an existing one, since retrofitting color-emoji behavior onto old dingbat characters caused rendering inconsistencies.
| Platform / Tool | Method |
|---|---|
| Word / Windows (Unicode input) | Type 262C (Adi Shakti) or 1FAAF (Khanda emoji), then Alt+X |
| Mac | Character Viewer (Cmd+Ctrl+Space), search "khanda" |
| iOS / Android emoji keyboard | Search "khanda" β πͺ― has shipped as a standard emoji since 2022 |
| HTML | ☬ (β¬, U+262C) |
CSS content | content: "\262C" |
Yes β πͺ― (U+1FAAF) was added to Unicode in 2022 specifically as a color emoji version of the Khanda, alongside the older plain-text β¬ (U+262C, officially named "Adi Shakti") that had stood in for it for years.
They're different symbols with different roles. Ik Onkar (ΰ©΄) is a Gurmukhi character meaning "One Creator" that appears on gurdwaras and the Guru Granth Sahib. The Khanda is the modern emblem (sword, chakkar, two kirpans) used on the Sikh flag and as a general identity symbol β it dates only to the 1930s and is never placed on the scripture itself.
β¬ is a simplified monochrome approximation that predates the dedicated πͺ― emoji β it was Unicode's best available stand-in for decades, officially named "Adi Shakti" rather than "Khanda," which is part of why the two get confused.
The central double-edged sword (khanda) represents divine knowledge cutting through falsehood; the circular chakkar represents the eternal, unbroken nature of God; the two crossed kirpans represent miri-piri, the unity of spiritual and worldly authority.
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