English: A sotōba, a strip of wood shaped like a gorintō laid as an offer on tombs in Japan. Visible the division in five sections representing the five elements of Buddhism cosmology, plus inscriptions in Sanskrit and Japanese. Follows below the deceased person's posthumous name (hidden in this photo for privacy reasons)

the Sanskrit characters... they are in the Siddhaṃ script which is used in esoteric Buddhism in Japan, but which was used in India 6th-12th centuries before Devanāgarī took over as the main script. The characters read top to bottom: kha ha ra va a . The first 5 syllables are associated with the 5 elements: space, air, fire, water, earth. The boards are shaped like a stupa (or pagoda) the shapes of which are also associated with the elements. "a"=anutpada, "va"=vac, "ra"=rajas, "ha"=hetu, "kha"=kha, Tathata is an-utpada (non-origination), it is beyond vac (voice, sound), it is pure and no rajas (dust), it is far apart from hetu (causation), and it is equal to kha (empty space).

āṃḥ, seed-syllable for Dainichi Nyorai (Sanskrit: Mahāvairocana), the central deity of Esoteric Buddhism.