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There are several methods of transliteration from Devanāgarī into Roman scripts. The most widely used transliteration method is IAST. However, there are other transliteration options.

Contents 1 Major Transliteration Methods 1.1 IAST 1.2 ISO 15919 1.3 ASCII schemes 2 Transliteration Comparison 2.1 Vowels 2.2 Consonants 2.3 Consonant Clusters 2.4 Other Consonants 3 Details 3.1 Pronunciation of the final "a" 3.2 Retroflex consonants 3.3 Aspirated consonants 4 History of Sanskrit Transliteration 5 See also

The following are the major transliteration methods for Devanāgarī:

Main article: IAST

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the 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. It is based on a standard established by the Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912.

The National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST.

Main article: ISO 15919

A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic graphemes to the Latin script. See also Transliteration of Indic scripts: how to use ISO 15919. The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical to the academic standard, IAST: "International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration", and to the United States Library of Congress standard, ALA-LC: [1]

Main articles: Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS

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 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.

The following is a comparison of the major transliteration methods used for Devanāgarī.

Devanāgarī	IPA	IAST	Harvard-Kyoto	ITRANS
अ	[ə]	a	a	a
आ	[ɑː]	ā	A	A/aa
इ	[i]	i	i	i
ई	[iː]	ī	I	I/ii
उ	[u]	u	u	u
ऊ	[uː]	ū	U	U/uu
ए	[eː]	e	e	e
ऐ	[aːi]	ai	ai	ai
ओ	[oː]	o	o	o
औ	[aːu]	au	au	au
ऋ	[ɹ̩]	ṛ	R	RRi/R^i
ॠ	[ɹ̩ː]	ṝ	RR	RRI/R^I
ऌ	[l̩]	ḷ	lR	LLi/L^i
ॡ	[l̩ː]	ḹ	lRR	LLI/L^I
अं	[ⁿ]	ṃ	M	M/.n/.m
अः	[h]	ḥ	H	H

Devanāgarī	IPA	IAST	Harvard-Kyoto	ITRANS
क	[k]	k	k	k
ख	[kʰ]	kh	kh	kh
ग	[g]	g	g	g
घ	[gʰ]	gh	gh	gh
ङ	[ŋ]	ṅ	G	~N
च	[c]	c	c	ch
छ	[cʰ]	ch	ch	Ch
ज	[ɟ]	j	j	j
झ	[ɟʰ]	jh	jh	jh
ञ	[ɲ]	ñ	J	~n
ट	[ʈ]	ṭ	T	T
ठ	[ʈʰ]	ṭh	Th	Th
ड	[ɖ]	ḍ	D	D
ढ	[ɖʰ]	ḍh	Dh	Dh
ण	[ɳ]	ṇ	N	N
त	[t̪]	t	t	t
थ	[t̪ʰ]	th	th	th
द	[d̪]	d	d	d
ध	[d̪ʰ]	dh	dh	dh
न	[n]	n	n	n
प	[p]	p	p	p
फ	[pʰ]	ph	ph	ph
ब	[b]	b	b	b
भ	[bʰ]	bh	bh	bh
म	[m]	m	m	m
य	[j]	y	y	y
र	[r]	r	r	r
ल	[l]	l	l	l
व	[v]	v	v	v/w
श	[ɕ]	ś	z	sh
ष	[ʂ]	ṣ	S	Sh
स	[s]	s	s	s
ह	[ɦ]	h	h	h

Devanāgarī	IPA	IAST	Harvard-Kyoto	ITRANS
क्ष	[kʃə]	kṣ	kS	kS/kSh/x
त्र	[t̪ɾə]	tr		tr
ज्ञ	[gjə]	jñ	jJ	GY/j~n
श्र	[ɕcə]	śc		shr

Devanāgarī	IPA	IAST	Harvard-Kyoto	ITRANS
क़	[qə]	q		q
ख़	[xə]	k͟h		Kh
ग़	[ɣə]	ġ		G
ज़	[zə]	z		z
फ़	[fə]	f		f
ड़	[ɽə]	ṛ		.D/R
ढ़	[ɽʱə]	ṛh		.Dh/Rh

Note: both ड़ and ऋ use the diacritic "ṛ" in IAST

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.

• Sanskrit: Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaņa, Śiva
• Hindi: Mahābhārat, Rāmāyaņ, Śiv

Some words keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:

e.g; Kriśna, vajra, Maurya

Some Indian languages continue to use the original pronunciation today. Some have an intermediate pronunciation.

Most Indian languages make a distinction between the retroflex and dental forms of the dental consonants. In IAST transliteration, the retroflex forms are ḍ, ṭ, ṇ and ṣ. 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.

In most informal transliterations the distinction between retroflex and dental consonants is not indicated.

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.

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. bʽ for IAST bh). The sibilants IAST ṣ and ś he expressed with spiritus asper and lenis, respectively (sʽ, sʼ). Monier-Williams in his 1899 dictionary used ṡ and sh for IAST ś and ṣ, 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.

• The National Library at Kolkata romanization, and ISO 15919 are extensions of IAST to transcribe all Indic scripts.
• ISCII is an 8-bit encoding for Indic scripts
• Indian Language Converter - converts Harvard-Kyoto transliterations into Unicode Devanagari.