Transliteration scheme

[Guest guest]

Since Shree Krishnamurthy raised the question relating to appropriate

scheme for transliteration of Sanskrit, I passed that information to Shree

Nandu Abhyankar who has been very actively involved in making Sanskrit

available through internet. I am taking the liberty to pass the respose

I received from Nandu. For those who are interested, Sanskrit Digest has

trasliterated many sanskrit documents. Nandu has given the references that

may be of interest to the group.

 

Hari Om!

Sadananda

--------------------

 

Namaste Sadananda and Prof. Krishnamurty,

 

It has been long time since we communicated. Thanks for the message.

I hope we will get to hear from you more often.

 

We use Itrans scheme and software for beyond its email utility.

I will elaborate about it below.

 

There have been many encoding schemes such as Kyoto-Harvard, Itrans,

Titus, Indology-Velthuis, TZ format, Wikner-SKT et cetera.

Individuals prefer one to another depending on the intention of

their work. The email medium requires following of one or

another for communication so far as consistency is maintained.

(The WYSIWYG software have entirely different keying strategies.)

 

> >"V. Krishnamurthy" <profvk

> >

> >I am wondering whether we may not consider adopting the Kyoto-Harvard

> >Convention for transliterating Sanskrit quotations for our

> >communication purposes.

 

Yes, if most of the people on the newsgroup find it suitable for

communication then it appears to be a simple scheme to adopt.

 

There are some difficulties, however, when one wants to see

the quotations or texts in more permanent and appropriate

devanaagarii format. A proper pronunciation also is to be conveyed

through the adopted scheme.

 

We have found Itrans scheme to be more appropriate to

convert same text into devanaagarii(Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit),

roman diacritics, Telugu, Gujarati, Tamil, Kannada as an output.

It also incorporates finer points for pronunciation.

> > The entire Mahabharata, Valmiki Ramayana and

> >Bhagavatam have been digitalised this way. It does not need any

> >diacritical marks and it has a uniqueness of impossibility of being

> >misread because of its ingenious use of capital and small letters of

> >the plain english alphabet. It is the following:

 

Yes, Professor Tokunaga and his collegues have made monumental

contribution by encoding such large texts. They use the Kyoto system

with internal/external sandhii marks to perform analysis on the

text from indological standpoint.

 

Our intention is to see them in devanaagarii.

 

Please let us know from where one can obtain a copy Bhagvatam

as we are not aware of it.

 

The Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Rigveda along with other upanishads,

meghaduuta, paaNinii's ashhTaadhyaayii, R^itusa.nhaara, saundaryalaharii,

giitagovindaM, gurugiitaa et cetera are displayed in devanaagarii at

http://www.hscc.net/sanskrit and

http://sanskrit.gde.to/

ftp://jaguar.cs.utah.edu/sanskrit/index.html

Please have a look at the texts provided by volunteers.

 

The Itrans scheme is very similar to Kyoto Harvard with

difference as follows. A multiplicity is added for

user's convenience.

> >Vowels (of Sanskrit): a A i I u U R L e ai o au

 

a A(aa) i I(ii) u U(uu) R^i R^I L^i L^I e ai o au aM aH

 

Upper case letters need shift key which can slow down the encoding

process so I prefer aa, uu, ii et cetera.

 

> >Gutturals: k kh g gh G

 

~N

> >palatals: c ch j jh J

 

ch Ch(chh) ~n

 

In English c is more often pronounced as ka than cha.

> >linguals: T Th D Dh N

> >dentals: t th d dh n

> >labials: p ph b bh m

> >semivowels: y r l v

> >sibilants: z S s as in ziva, SaNmukha, sukhaM

 

sh Sh(shh) s

 

Calling Shiva as ziva or sharaNaM as zaraNaM is little difficult.

 

Itrans uses urdu letters with nuukta and z is a letter used

to have a dot under ja, as baajaar.

> >aspiration: h

> >anusvAra: M

 

Itrans has M, .n, .m, {\m+} to distinguish sound for particular

nasals of letters following the anusvaar.

> >visarga: H

> >avagraha: '

> >

 

avagraha is treated as .a, namo.astute since the second word

more often starts with letter a.

 

halanta is treated with .h.

 

Vedic anusvaars are added for output display. See Rigveda.

> >Examples: sarva-dharmAn parityajya mAmekaM zaraNaM vraja / ahaM tvA

> >sarva-pApebhyo mokSayiSyAmi mA zucaH //

> >yaH sarvatrAnabhisnehaH tattad-prApya zubhAzubhaM / nAbhinandati na

> >dveSTi tasya praJA pratiSThitA //

 

jJA

> >

> >yadA yadA hi dharmasya glAnir-bhavati bhArata / abhyutthAnaM

> >adharmasya tadAtmAnaM sRjAmyahaM //

 

m

> >

> >RtaMca satyaMca //

> >

> >kamo'kArSIt //

> >

> >Yours, Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

> >------

 

This is fine.

 

We are perhaps directing the attention to encoded text in

its output format, to be read in devanaagarii. Itrans software can

process same text to be read in other scripts as well.

 

For email message, the finer aspects may not be necessary and you may

achieve proper communication with Kyoto system, if you keep the

consistency. If the messages are of lasting values or are Sanskrit texts,

then we would like to read them in devanaagarii. That is the main idea

behind following Itrans notation.

 

In passing,

it will be worth your time to load the Itranslator software at

http://www.geocities.com/~omkara/Itrans.htm

which is developed by Swami-s at Omkarananda Ashram at Rishikesh.

 

Please use what is convenient to you and the readers. The scheme is

mere a medium to convey what you want to present to people.

 

Regards,

 

Nandu

 

 

K. Sadananda

Code 6323

Naval Research Laboratory

Washington D.C. 20375

Voice (202)767-2117

Fax:(202)767-2623