sanskrit transliteration at a glance

This chart shows the letters of the Devanagari script used to write Sanskrit, their unicode values, and their equivalents in three of the most commonly used transliteration schemes.

vowels
devanagari

unicode
(dependent)
 

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+0905
 
 
a
a
a

U+0906

U+093E
ā
A
A,aa

U+0907
ि
U+093F
i
i
i

U+0908

U+0940
ī
I
I,ii

U+0909

U+0941
u
u
u

U+090A

U+0942
ū
U
U,uu
vowels
devanagari

unicode
(dependent)
 

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+090B

U+0943

R
RRi,R^i

U+090C

U+0944

lR
LLi ,L^i

U+090F

U+0947
e
e
e

U+0910

U+0948
ai
ai
ai

U+0913

U+094B
o
o
o

U+0914

U+094C
au
au
au
gutturals
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+0915
ka
ka
ka

U+0916
kha
kha
kha

U+0917
ga
ga
ga

U+0918
gha
gha
gha

U+0919
ṅa
Ga
~Na
palatals
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+091A
ca
ca
cha

U+091B
cha
cha
Cha

U+091C
ja
ja
ja

U+091D
jha
jha
jha

U+091E
ña
Ja
~na, JNa
retroflexes
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+091F
ṭa
Ta
Ta

U+0920
ṭha
Tha
Tha

U+0921
ḍa
Da
Da

U+0922
ḍha
Dha
Dha

U+0923
ṇa
Na
Na
dentals
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+0924
ta
ta
ta

U+0925
tha
tha
tha

U+0926
da
da
da

U+0927
dha
dha
dha

U+0928
na
na
na
labials
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+092A
pa
pa
pa

U+092B
pha
pha
pha

U+092C
ba
ba
ba

U+092D
bha
bha
bha

U+092E
ma
ma
ma
semi-vowels
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+092F
ya
ya
ya

U+0930
ra
ra
ra

U+0932
la
la
la

U+0935
va
va
va,wa
sibilants
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+0936
śa
za
sha

U+0937
ṣa
Sa
Sha,shha

U+0938
sa
sa
sa
(miscellaneous)
devanagari

unicode
iast
harvard kyoto
itrans

U+0939
ha
ha
ha

U+0902

M
M,.n,.m

U+0903

H
H,.h

U+0950
Oṃ
oM
OM, AUM
itrans irregular combinations
 
regular
irregular
क्ष
kSha
xa
ज्ञ
j~na
GYa,dnya

notes

Transliteration is just a simple matter of looking up a character in one alphabet and substituting a character from another, right? If only.

The ideal transliteration scheme would …

Let’s see how the commonly used schemes for Sanskrit stack up:

IASTITRANSHKlatin
Reversible107100
Legible76510
One-to-one8676
Normal keyboard091010
Total25283226

IAST

yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ

The IAST (International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration) is the script with all the dots commonly seen in western academic writings. The trouble is, some of those dotted characters exist only in IAST and aren’t used in any normal writing system, so there’s no standard keyboard in the world that can type them. IAST was invented in 1912, and was relevant in the days of limited typesetting capabilities, but it’s hard to see what it has to offer in the all-unicode 21st century. Specialists should be able to read and print the real thing just as easily as some invented specialist alphabet.

plain latin letters

yogash chitta-vritti-nirodhah

For the non-specialist western reader, all the dots and accents in IAST are just offputting and confusing. For something that's intended for non-specialist western readers, the best option is to just use the nearest equivalent latin letters. Most people who aren’t native speakers of Indian languages can’t hear or pronounce the difference between dental and retroflex Ts and Ds anyway.

You can forget converting back from pure latin texts.

“ASANA” is the commonly used latin spelling for the word for “yoga posture” (it literally means “seat” or “seated position”). The corect sanskrit spelling is आसन. Five letters in latin, three in devanagari – how hard can that be? Well. Short “A” and long “A” are different devanagari characters. (So is “even shorter A” in some modern Indian languages, but if we confine ourselves to Sanskrit we don’t have to worry about that just yet.) There are three devanagari characters that roughly correspond to “S”, and four “N”-like sounds.

That, if I calculate correctly, gives us 96 possible Sanskrit renderings of “ASANA”. OK, we can look up the correct one in a dictionary. There are ways of coding that that aren’t as slow as it might sound, but you won’t like your bandwidth bills when people start downloading your “little” transliterator program that now includes a comprehensive Sanskrit dictionary. Get used to it, because it’s only going to get worse when you decide to start supporting Hindi, Marathi, Nepali …

And your troubles have only just begun. Supposing five of those 96 variant spellings turn out to be valid, different, Sanskrit words? In order to work out which one you meant, the program is going to have to start understanding what it probably means in the context of the words before it; and backtracking to review that in the light of the words that come after it. And when it can do that, congratulations, your simple little lookup table is about ready to sit the Turing Test.

ITRANS

yogashchittavR^ittinirodhaH

You can convert Devanagari to ITRANS and back no problem. You can go the other way, but because of the many character variations ITRANS allows there’s no guarantee that the ITRANS text you get out will be the same as the ITRANS text you put in.

You can type ITRANS on a normal western keyboard as long as you know how to get “~” and “^”.

Harvard Kyoto

yogazcittavRttinirodhaH

Harvard Kyoto uses only normal keyboard characters and is reversible both ways, but the heavy use of uppercase letters makes it look ugly and some of the phonetic mappings aren’t obvious.

References

sanskrit-sanscrito.com: comparing transliteration systems

ITRANS 5.3 official reference

ITRANS supplemented with older/irregular characters used in texts from the Sanskrit Documents List