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IAST
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article contains Indic text. Without rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes or other symbols instead of Indic characters; or irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. |
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 IAST allows a lossless transliteration of Devanāgarī (and other Indic scripts, such as Śāradā), and as such represents not only the phonemes of Sanskrit, but allows essentially phonetic transcription (e.g. Visarga ḥ is an allophone of word-final r and s).
The National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanization of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST.
The sign inventory of IAST (both small and capital letters) shown with Devanāgarī equivalents and phonetic values in IPA, is as follows (valid for Sanskrit; for Hindi, some minor phonological changes have occurred):
| अ [ə] a A |
आ [ɑː] ā Ā |
इ [i] i I |
ई [iː] ī Ī |
उ [u] u U |
ऊ [uː] ū Ū |
ऋ [ɹ̩] ṛ Ṛ |
ॠ [ɹ̩ː] ṝ Ṝ |
ऌ [l̩] ḷ Ḷ |
ॡ [l̩ː] ḹ Ḹ |
vowels |
| ए [eː] e E |
ऐ [aːi] ai Ai |
ओ [oː] o O |
औ [aːu] au Au |
diphthongs |
| अं [ⁿ] ṃ Ṃ |
anusvara |
| अः [h] ḥ Ḥ |
visarga |
| velars | palatals | retroflexes | dentals | labials | |
| क [k] k K |
च [c] c C |
ट [ʈ] ṭ Ṭ |
त [t̪] t T |
प [p] p P |
unvoiced stops |
| ख [kʰ] kh Kh |
छ [cʰ] ch Ch |
ठ [ʈʰ] ṭh Ṭh |
थ [t̪ʰ] th Th |
फ [pʰ] ph Ph |
aspirated unvoiced stops |
| ग [g] g G |
ज [ɟ] j J |
ड [ɖ] ḍ Ḍ |
द [d̪] d D |
ब [b] b B |
voiced stops |
| घ [gʰ] gh Gh |
झ [ɟʰ] jh Jh |
ढ [ɖʰ] ḍh Ḍh |
ध [d̪ʰ] dh Dh |
भ [bʰ] bh Bh |
aspirated voiced stops |
| ङ [ŋ] ṅ Ṅ |
ञ [ɲ] ñ Ñ |
ण [ɳ] ṇ Ṇ |
न [n] n N |
म [m] m M |
nasal |
| य [j] y Y |
र [r] r R |
ल [l] l L |
व [v] v V |
semi-vowels | |
| श [ɕ] ś Ś |
ष [ʂ] ṣ Ṣ |
स [s] s S |
sibilants | ||
| ह [ɦ] h H |
voiced fricative |
Note: 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 only useful in Pāṇini contexts, where the convention is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters (see Aṣṭādhyāyī).
For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919. The following five exceptions are due to the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire symbols to allow transliteration of Devanagari and other Indic scripts as used for languages other than Sanskrit.
| Devanagari | IAST | ISO 15919 | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| ए/ े | e | ē | ISO e represents ऎ/ ॆ. |
| ओ/ो | o | ō | ISO o represents ऒ/ॊ. |
| ं | ṃ | ṁ | ISO ṃ represents Gurmukhi Tippi ੰ. |
| ऋ/ ृ | ṛ | r̥ | ISO ṛ represents ड़ /ɽ/. |
| ॠ/ ॄ | ṝ | r̥̄ | for consistency with r̥. |