Typing Sanskrit in Roman

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namaste

 

I am attaching some suggestions to typeset Sanskrit

in roman, while posting to the newsgroup.

 

Narayanaswami

shrI mAtre namaH:

"srii maatre nama.h

 

In this group, most of the postings involve

usage of Sanskrit words (either as simple phrases,

or as complete verses) written in roman.

For the benefit of all readers, and for the

sake of uniformity throughout,

it is better to define a reasonable transliteration

scheme for typing romanized Sanskrit.

 

Since some of the members are already used to ITRANS

package (since they have encoded many Sanskrit documents

using ITRANS and LaTeX packages for the Sanskrit Document

Site), one possibility is to adopt the ITRANS convention

for Devanagari, which I am giving below. (ITRANS convention

Tamil transliteration scheme is slightly different).

I am sure, most of the members here are quite familiar

with ITRANS coinventions, and I have seen they use

this scheme regularly in the postings here.

But it is useful for the newcomers to this

group to knwo what transliteration should they

use in their postings.

 

ITRANS

vowels

^^^^^^

a A ( or aa) i I ( or ii) u U ( or uu)

R^i R^I L^i L^I e ai o au

M (or .n, or .m ) anusvara)

H (visarga)

.a (for avagraha as in bhaje.ahM)

 

NOTE: There is no E (or ee), and no O (oo) in Sanskrit

language, even though Malayalam and Tamil has them.

 

consonants

^^^^^^^^^

 

k kh g gh N^ (or ~N, or ^N)

ch chh (or Ch) j jh ~n (or JN)

T Th D Dh N

t th d dh n

p ph b bh m

 

y r l v (or w)

 

sh (as in shaN^kara)

shh (or Sh) (an in shhaNmukha)

s (as in saroja)

h (as in hari)

L (or ld) (as in praLaya)

ksh (or xa) (nakshatraM)

j~n (or GY) (as in j~nAni)

 

(some of the conventions in bracket refer to various

versions of ITRANS. The current version is ITRANS5.20, but

all these notations are back-compatable.

 

In some other wordprocessing packages, they avoid

capital letters altogether (For example, in

Charles Wikner's SKT package for LaTeX2e)

and write

aa for A

ii I

uu U and so forth.

 

ITRANS also accepts this usage (as also the Frans Velthuis

Devnagari for TeX package).

 

Charles Wikner's excellent SKT package for LaTeX2e

(it has accents for Rig/Sama veda, and numerous

options for written Sanskrit) uses the following convention.

Here, capital letters are never employed.

More or less, the same scheme is employed by

Frans Velthuis in his Devanagari for TeX package,

and Jereon Hellingman in his MalayalamTeX package.

 

SKT

vowels

^^^^^^

a aa i ii u uu .r .r.r .l .l.l

e ai o au

.m (anusvara)

.h (visarga)

.a (for avagraha as in bhaje.ah.m)

 

consonants

^^^^^^^^^^

 

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 r l v

 

"s (as in "sa"nkara)

.s (as in .sa.nmukha)

s (as in saroja)

h (as in hari)

"d (as in pra"daya)

k.s (as in nak.satra.m)

j~n (as in j~naani)

 

SKT also uses the following Vedic accents

underscore (_) and exclamation (!), for example

A Samavedic accent also exists using

(1), <2>, <3>, <2r>, <2u>, <3k>

t_ejasvi naa_vadhii!tamastu |

 

Maybe there are other possible variants.

 

Here is an example to compare both the schemes:

 

ITRANS

^^^^^^

sakuN^kumavilepanAmaLikachumbikastUrikAM

samandahasitekshanAM sashara chApapAshAN^kushAm |

asheshhajanamohinImaruNamAlyabhUshhAmbarAM

japAkusumabhAsurAM japavidhau smaredamibkAm ||

 

SKT

^^^

saku"nkumavilepanaama"dikacumbikastuurikaa.m

samandahasitek.sa.naa.m sa"saracaapapaa"saa"nku"saam |

a"se.sajanamohiniimaru.namaalyabhu.saambaraa.m

japaakusumabhaasuraa.m japavidhau smaredambikaam ||

 

 

Maybe it is time to define a standardized tranliteration

scheme for this group, and request all members to

adhere to it as much as possible. In this way,

we can ensure everyone reads the same material

without any ambiguity.

 

namaste

Narayanaswami