Information AboutDevanagari Transliteration |
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There are several methods of Transliteration from Devanāgarī into Roman Scripts . The most widely used transliteration methods are IAST (for print) and ITRANS (for e-text). However, there are other transliteration options. MAJOR TRANSLITERATION METHODS The following are the major Transliteration methods for Devanāgarī: IAST The International Alphabet Of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the most popular academic standard for the romanization of Sanskrit. IAST is the de-facto standard used in printed publications, like books and magazines, and with the wider availability of Unicode fonts, it is also increasingly used for electronic texts. The National Library At Kolkata Romanization , intended for the romanization of all Indic Scripts , is an extension of IAST . ISO 15919 See Also: ISO 15919 A standard : {Link without Title} ASCII schemes Harvard-Kyoto Compared to IAST , Harvard-Kyoto looks much simpler. It does not contain all the Diacritic marks that IAST contains. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. However, Harvard-Kyoto may look simpler, but IAST is more pleasing to eyes. Harvard-Kyoto uses Capital Letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words. ITRANS scheme ITRANS is an extension of Harvard-Kyoto . Many webpages are written in ITRANS. Many forums are also written in ITRANS. ITRANS is not only used as transliteration. It is also a pre-processor for typing in Indic Scripts . The user inputs in roman letters and the ITRANS preprocessor displays the roman letters into Devanāgarī (or other Indic languages). The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July, 2001. TRANSLITERATION COMPARISON The following is a comparison of the major transliteration methods used for Devanāgarī. Vowels Consonants Consonant Clusters Other Consonants Note: both ड़ and ऋ use the diacritic "" in IAST DETAILS Pronunciation of the final "a" Many words and names transliterated from Devanāgarī end with "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original Sanskrit . This final 'inherent a' is often no longer pronounced in some Sanskrit-derived Indian Languages , including Hindi . This results in an alternative 'modern' Transliteration that omits it.
Some words keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it: e.g; Krishna, vajra, Maurya Some Indian languages continue to use the original pronunciation today. Some have an intermediate pronunciation. Retroflex consonants Most Indian Languages make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In formal transliteration schemes, the standard Roman letters are used to indicate the dental form, and the retroflex form is indicated by special marks, or the use of other letters. E.g., in IAST transliteration, the retroflex forms are and . In most informal transliterations the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated. Aspirated consonants Where the letter "h" appears after a Plosive Consonant in Devanāgarī transliteration, it ''always'' indicates Aspiration , thus "ph" is pronounced as the p in "pit" (with a small puff of air released as it is said) never as the ph in "photo". On the other hand "p" is pronounced as the p in "spit" with no release of air. Similarly "th" is an aspirated "t", neither the th of "this" or the th of "thin". The aspiration is generally indicated in both formal and informal transliteration systems. HISTORY OF SANSKRIT TRANSLITERATION Early Sanskrit texts were originally transmitted by memorization and repetition. Post-Harappan India had no system for writing Indic languages until the creation (in the 4th-3rd centuries BCE) of the Kharoshti and Brahmi scripts. These writing systems, though adequate for Middle Indic Languages , were not well-adapted to writing Sanskrit. However, later descendants of Brahmi were modified so that they could record Sanskrit in exacting phonetic detail. The earliest physical text in Sanskrit is a rock inscription by the Western Kshatrapa ruler Rudradaman , written c. 150 CE in Junagadh , Gujarat . Due to the remarkable proliferation of different varieties of Brahmi in the Middle Ages, there is today no single script used for writing Sanskrit; rather, Sanskrit scholars can write the language in a form of whatever script is used to write their local language. However, since the late Middle Ages, there has been a tendency to use Devanagari for writing Sanskrit texts for a widespread readership. Western scholars in the 19th Century adopted Devanagari for printed editions of Sanskrit texts. The '' Editio Princeps '' of the Rigveda by Max Müller was in Devanagari, a typographical ''tour de force'' at the time. Müller's London typesetters competed with their Petersburg peers working on Böhtlingk 's and Roth 's dictionary in cutting all the required ligature types. From its beginnings, Western Sanskrit philology also felt the need for a romanized spelling of the language. Franz Bopp in 1816 used a romanization scheme, alongside Devanagari, differring from IAST in expressing vowel length by a circumflex (â, î, û), and aspiration by a '' Spiritus Asper '' (e.g. for IAST ). The sibilants IAST and he expressed with spiritus asper and lenis, respectively (). Monier-Williams in his 1899 dictionary used and sh for IAST and , respectively. From the late 19th century, Western interest in typesetting Devanagari decreased. Theodor Aufrecht published his 1877 edition of the Rigveda in romanized Sanskrit, and Arthur Macdonell 's 1910 ''Vedic grammar'' (and 1916 ''Vedic grammar for students'') likewise do without Devanagari (while his introductory ''Sanskrit grammar for students'' retains Devanagari alongside romanized Sanskrit). Contemporary Western editions of Sanskrit texts appear mostly in IAST. SEE ALSO
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