International Alphabet of Sanskrit

Transliteration
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme
that allows the lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic
languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the nineteenth century from suggestions
by Charles Trevelyan, William Jones, Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised
by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress, in September 1894.[1] IAST
makes it possible for the reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the
original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing
popularity amongst scholars.

Contents
Use
Inventory and conventions
Comparison with ISO 15919
Computer input by alternative keyboard layout
Computer input by selection from a screen
Font support
See also
References
External links

Use
University scholars commonly use IAST in publications that cite textual material in Sanskrit, Pāḷi
and other classical Indian languages.

IAST is also used for major e-text repositories such as SARIT (http://sarit.indology.info),
Muktabodha (http://muktalib5.org/digital_library_secure_entry.htm), GRETIL (http://gretil.su
b.uni-goettingen.de/), and sanskritdocuments.org (http://sanskritdocuments.org/iast/).

The IAST scheme represents more than a century of scholarly usage in books and journals on
classical Indian studies. By contrast, the ISO 15919 standard for transliterating Indic scripts
emerged in 2001 from the standards and library worlds; it includes solutions to problems such as
representing Old Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan languages side by side in library catalogues,
etc. For the most part, ISO 15919 follows the IAST scheme, departing from it only in minor ways
(e.g., ṃ/ṁ and ṛ/r̥)—see comparison below.

The Indian National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanization of all Indic
scripts, is an extension of IAST.
Inventory and conventions
The IAST letters are listed with their Devanāgarī equivalents and phonetic values in IPA, valid for
Sanskrit, Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, but some phonological
changes have occurred:

Vowels and codas

Devanāgarī Transcription Category

अ a A

आ ā Ā

इ i I

ई ī Ī

उ u U monophthongs
and syllabic liquids
ऊ ū Ū

ऋ ṛ Ṛ

ॠ ṝ Ṝ

ऌ Ḷ

ॡ Ḹ

ए e E

ऐ ai Ai
diphthongs
ओ o O

औ au Au

◌ं ṃ Ṃ anusvara

◌ः ḥ Ḥ visarga

◌ँ ˜ chandrabindu

ऽ ' avagraha

Consonants
velars palatals retroflexes dentals labials Category

क च ट त प tenuis stops
k K c C ṭ Ṭ t T p P

ख छ ठ थ फ aspirated stops
kh Kh ch Ch ṭh Ṭh th Th ph Ph

ग ज ड द ब voiced stops
g G j J ḍ Ḍ d D b B

घ झ ढ ध भ breathy-voiced stops
gh Gh jh Jh ḍh Ḍh dh Dh bh Bh

ङ ञ ण न म nasal stops
ṅ Ṅ ñ Ñ ṇ Ṇ n N m M

ह य र ल व approximants
h H y Y r R l L v V

श ष स sibilants
ś Ś ṣ Ṣ s S
The highlighted letters are those modified with diacritics: long vowels are marked with an overline,
vocalic (syllabic) consonants and retroflexes have an underdot.

Unlike ASCII-only romanizations such as ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto, the diacritics used for IAST
allow capitalization of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially
(Ṇ Ṅ Ñ Ṝ) are useful only when writing in all-caps and in Pāṇini contexts for which the convention
is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters.

Comparison with ISO 15919

For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919 that merges: the retroflex (underdotted) liquids
with the vocalic ones (ringed below); and the short close-mid vowels with the long ones. The
following seven exceptions are from the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire of
symbols to allow transliteration of Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts, as used for languages other
than Sanskrit.

ISO
Devanāgarī IAST Comment
15919

ISO e generally represents short ए / ◌ॆ , but optionally represents long ए / ◌े in

ए / ◌े e ē (e)
Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, and Odia script.

ISO o generally represents short ऒ / ◌ॆ , but optionally represents long ओ / ◌ो in

ओ / ◌ो o ō (o)
Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, and Odia script.

अं / ◌ं ṃ ṁ ISO ṃ represents Gurmukhi tippi ◌ੰ.

ऋ / ◌ृ ṛ r̥ ISO ṛ represents ड़ /ɽ/.

ॠ / ◌ॄ ṝ r̥̄ for consistency with r̥.

ऌ / ◌ॢ ḷ l̥ ISO ḷ represents ळ /ɭ̆/.

ॡ / ◌ॣ ḹ l̥̄ for consistency with l̥ .

Computer input by alternative keyboard layout

The most convenient method of inputting romanized Sanskrit is by setting up an alternative
keyboard layout. This allows one to hold a modifier key to type letters with diacritical marks. For
example, alt + a = ā. How this is set up varies by operating system.

Linux Modern Linux systems allow one to set up custom keyboard layouts (http://www.garudam.i
nfo/sanskrit-transliteration-keyboard-on-linux/) and switch them by clicking a flag icon in the
menu bar.

macOS One can use the pre-installed US International keyboard, or install Toshiya Unebe's Easy
Unicode keyboard layout. A revision of this is Shreevatsa R's EasyIAST (https://shreevatsa.wordpr
ess.com/2013/01/22/a-better-keyboard-layout-for-typing-iast-on-mac-os-x-based-on-easyunicod
e/).

Microsoft Windows Windows also allows one to change keyboard layouts and set up additional
custom keyboard mappings for IAST (https://tech.western-hindu.org/2012/01/05/i-have-an-upd
ated-free-windows-keyboard-mapping-for-iastiso-15919/). This Pali keyboard installer[2] made by
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) supports IAST (works on Microsoft Windows up to
at least version 10).
Computer input by selection from a screen
Many systems provide a way to select Unicode
characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as
a screen-selection entry method.

Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode

version of the Character Map program (find it by
hitting ⊞ Win + R then type charmap then hit
↵ Enter ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in the
consumer edition since XP. This is limited to
characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).
Characters are searchable by Unicode character
name, and the table can be limited to a particular
code block. More advanced third-party tools of the Applet for character selection
same type are also available (a notable freeware
example is BabelMap).

macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by
related characters, glyph tables in a font, etc. It can be enabled (https://web.archive.org/web/2011
0109234035/http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/glyphspalette/) in the input menu in the
menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences →
Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many
programs.

Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap (GNOME) or kcharselect (KDE) – exist on most Linux
desktop environments.

Users of SCIM on Linux based platforms can also have the opportunity to install and use the sa-
itrans-iast input handler which provides complete support for the ISO 15919 standard for the
romanization of Indic languages as part of the m17n library.

Font support
Only certain fonts support all the Latin Unicode characters essential for the transliteration of Indic
scripts according to the ISO 15919 standard. For example, the Arial, Tahoma and Times New
Roman font packages that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions also support
precomposed Unicode characters like ā, ḍ, ḥ, ī, ḷ, ḹ, ṃ, ñ, ṅ, ṇ, ṛ, ṝ, ṣ, ś, ṭ and ū, glyphs for some of
which are only to be found in the Latin Extended Additional Unicode block. The majority of other
text fonts commonly used for book production are defective in their support for one or more
characters from this block. Accordingly, many academics working in the area of Sanskrit studies
now make use of free and open-source software like LibreOffice, instead of Microsoft Word, in
conjunction with free OpenType fonts like FreeSerif or Gentium, both of which have complete
support for the full repertoire of conjoined diacritics in the IAST character set. Released under the
GNU FreeFont or SIL Open Font License, respectively, such fonts may be freely shared and do not
require the person reading or editing a document to purchase proprietary software to make use of
its associated fonts.

See also
Devanagari transliteration
 Āryabhaṭa numeration
Hunterian transliteration
Harvard-Kyoto
ITRANS
National Library at Kolkata romanization
ISO 15919
Shiva Sutra

References
1. Monier-Williams, Monier (1899). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-
koeln.de/scans/MWScan/MWScanpdf/mw010033.pdf) (PDF). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
pp. xxx.
2. "Pali Keyboard" (http://fsnow.com/pali/keyboard/). fsnow.com. Retrieved 21 October 2019.

External links
Reddy, Shashir. "Shashir's Notes: Modern Transcription of Sanskrit" (http://shashir.autodidactu
s.org/shashir_umich/sanskrit_transcription.html). Retrieved 2 December 2016.
Stone, Anthony. "Transliteration of Indic Scripts: How to use ISO 15919" (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20160414223033/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stone-catend/trind.htm). Archived from
the original on 14 April 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
Wujastyk, Dominik (1996). "Transliteration of Devanagari" (http://indology.info/email/members/
wujastyk/). INDOLOGY. Retrieved 2 December 2016.
Typing a macron (http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/psu/gotunicode/macron.html) - page from
Penn State University about typing with accents
International Phonetic Alphabet chart with pronunciation guide (http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/i
pa/)
A visual chart which shows clearly 1. Which part of the mouth for each sound 2. The 3 groups
where the 12 diacritics appear. - from Dina-Anukampana Das (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0
B5ph4C2WV1JqZ1pjNTkxVll1ZGM)
Sanskrit Pronunciation Tips for beginners & Simple Charts to help memorize where the
diacritics fit in. - pages from Dina-Anukampana Das (https://vimeo.com/groups/sanskrit)
A pronunciation guide with chart and pronunciation tips. - from Dina-Anukampana Das (https://
drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ph4C2WV1JqeEdnZVhOVWx1MUE)
IAST <==> Devanagari online converter (Transliteration tool) (https://sites.google.com/site/tech
nicalhindi/files/IAST%20and%20other%20Roman%20encodings%20to%20Devanagari%20%2
0Converter_04.html?attredirects=0&d=1)
Sanskrit Transliteration Tool (https://www.ashtangayoga.info/sanskrit/transliteration/transliterati
on-tool/#iso_iast_kolkata/simplified/xn--tryambaka%20yajmahe%20sugandhi%20puivardhana
m%0Aurvrukamiva%20bandhann%20mtyormukya%20mmtt%20-4hi4aqoc295an760gsa61soa
76dlb23e)
Keyswap – IAST Diacritics Windows software (for Sanskrit scholars) (https://www.yesvedanta.
com/keyswap-sanskrit-diacritics-transliteration-typing-tool/)

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