IAST
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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.
[edit] IAST sign inventory and conventions
The sign inventory of IAST (both small and capital letters) shown with Devanāgarī equivalents and phonetic values in IPA, is as follows (essentially valid for Sanskrit, though 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).
