90: transliterations

different ways to spell Sanskrit in Roman lettersmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1767

For thousands of years, Sanskrit has been spelled in India with different alphabets, each of which has as many letters as Sanskrit has sounds. One of the most common is devanAgarI, but writing Sanskrit with, say, Bengali letters, is not wrong.

To save non-Indian students the effort to learning these alphabets, Sanskrit is nowadays often spelled in Roman letters. But there are different ways to do that.

The closest thing to a "standard" way of writing Sanskrit in Roman letters is the IAST spelling . You should definitely use that one in anything you publish in paper. Yet, as it has dots below some letters and macrons above others, it is quite inconvenient over the internet. Also, it is mostly not used in India, where using devanAgarI in books and computers is no big deal.

There are many different ways of spelling Sanskrit in Roman letters, that were invented by different people for different purposes. These are some of the most common --

transliterator at yesvedanta dot com

To see examples of different spellings, copy the following line --

dharmakSetre kurukSetre samavetA yuyutsavaH mAmakAH pANDavAz caiva kim akurvata saJMjaya

and paste it inside the transliterator above.

IAST spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1768

The IAST spelling is widely used in Western scholarly papers about Sanskrit, and is also found in some books and websites. It is less known in India, however.

a ā i ī u ū

ṛ ṝ ḷ

e o ai au

ṃ ḥ

k kh g gh ṅ

c ch j jh ñ

ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ

t th d dh n

p ph b bh m

y v r l

ś ṣ s

ITRANS spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1769

The ITRANS spelling is important because it is used in the sanskrit documents website .

It is mostly the same as hk, but it also has letters for sounds that are found in Indian languages that are not Sanskrit.

HK spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ C+ 1770

The Harvard-Kyoto Convention (also know as Kyoto-Harvard Convention) is a system for transliterating Sanskrit (and other languages that use the devanAgarI script) into ASCII. The standard HK system is described at --

wikipedia on Harvard Kyoto system

Its advantage is that it uses mostly ordinary letters.

It is used in indology.

With minor exceptions (kLpta and tita_u), it is possible to get the devanAgarI back from the standard hk.

Velthuis spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ C- 1771

In the Velthuis spelling you use dots in front instead of uppercase letters, and double the short vowels to make them long --

a aa i ii u uu

.r .rr .l

e ai o au

.m .h

k kh g gh "n

c ch j jh ~n

.t .th .d .dh .n

t th d dh n

p ph b bh m

y v r l

"s .s s

Instead of kh gh .th th etc you may also use K G .T T etc.

Example --

Darmak.setre kuruk.setre samavetaa yuyutsava.h

maamakaa.h paa.n.davaa"s caiva kim akurvata sa.mjaya

d.r.s.tvaa tu paa.n.davaaniika.m vyuu.Da.m duryoDanas tadaa

dharmakSetre kurukSetre samavetA yuyutsavaH

mAmakAH pANDavAz caiva kim akurvata saJMjaya

dRSTvA tu pANDavAnIkaM vyUDhanM duryodhanas tadA

The velthuis spelling allows faster typing, because "aa .n" are faster to type than "A N". You may use it in inria reader .

HKL spellingmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 1772

The hkl spelling is the one I use in this website. I made it up.

Most of the time it is the same as hk. The differences are minor --

(1) I misspell the nasalized ell sound from torli as l~. In correct hk, according to wikipedia, there is no way of writting it. According to indology, "n l" must be written "&l l". According to inria reader , ~l l must be spelled "n l".

(2) I misspell the vowel that comes after "R" in the zivasUtra as "L". In correct hk it must be spelled "lR", same as if it were the sound lR that we hear in " syatAsIlRluToH " and " lRT " and " lRG ".

(3) I mispell the hiatuses a + i and a + u as a_i or a::i and a_u or a::u. According to wikipedia and to auroville those should be spelled as if they were ai au.

Remember that, when using auroville, you must spell pra::uga and tita::u as prauga and titau, and kLp as klRp.

coloncolon symbolmmmmmmmmm ^ M- C+ 1773

In these pages I sometimes write : or :: between two letters.

Those are mostly useless. You are not supposed to write them yourself. I use them sometimes to help me in teaching, and other times to keep my scripts from getting confused.

Examples where I write "::" in the middle of a hiatus --

tita::unA

Here :: is used to prevent my scripts from turning "au" into the devanAgarI letter au, pronounced "ow!". The correct spelling of this word has a ta followed by an u.

qta::iddhAtoH

Same. This prevents scripts from turning "ai" into the devanAgarI letter ai, pronounced "eye".

bruva::IT

I like to write "::" in the middle of all hiati. You don't have to do that -- spelling bruvaIT is fine.

Example of "::" between consonants.

g::h means the letter g followed by the letter h. This is not the same thing as gh, which is just one letter in devanAgarI.

Example of colon after a nonjoiner.

amI: azvAH. Here the colon just reminds students that this I sound is a nonjoiner.

chunk 90: transliterations