Archaic interjection used to call out to someone, similar to 'hey!' or 'excuse me!'. Not used in modern Japanese.
"Hey, you there," the samurai called out.
Archaic sentence-final particle seeking agreement, similar to modern ね. Found in old texts and period speech.
"Fine weather today, isn't it?" the old man said.
Kanji form is archaic and virtually never used in contemporary writing.
The origin is uncertain; it appears in classical Japanese as an interjection and sentence-final particle.