International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language. It is also used to romanize Pāḷi, Prākṛta and Apabhraṁśa.

Use

IAST is especially used for books dealing with ancient Sanskrit and Pāḷi topics related to Indian religions. The script is, however, insufficient to represent both Sanskrit and Pāḷi on the same page properly because the ḷ, a vowel in Sanskrit, is the retroflexive consonant in Pāḷi. Here it is better to follow Unicode and ISO 15919, which is in any case a more comprehensive scheme.

IAST is based on a standard established by the International Congress of Orientalists at Geneva in 1894. It allows a lossless transliteration of Devanāgarī (and other Indic scripts, such as Śāradā script); and, as such, it 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.

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 (valid for Sanskrit; for Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, some phonological changes have occurred):

IAST

Category	Devanāgarī	Transcription	Lower case	Upper case
vowels	अ	[ɐ]	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
diphthongs	ए	[eː]	e	E
	ऐ	[aːi]	ai	Ai
	ओ	[oː]	o	O
	औ	[aːu]	au	Au
anusvara	अं	[ⁿ]	ṁ	Ṁ
visarga	अः	[h]	ḥ	Ḥ

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	tenuis plosives
ख [kʰ] kh  Kh	छ [cʰ] ch  Ch	ठ [ʈʰ] ṭh  Ṭh	थ [t̪ʰ] th  Th	फ [pʰ] ph  Ph	aspirated plosives
ग [ɡ] g  G	ज [ɟ] j  J	ड [ɖ] ḍ  Ḍ	द [d̪] d  D	ब [b] b  B	voiced plosives
घ [ɡʱ] gh  Gh	झ [ɟʱ] jh  Jh	ढ [ɖʱ] ḍh  Ḍh	ध [d̪ʱ] dh  Dh	भ [bʱ] bh  Bh	breathy-voiced plosives
ङ [ŋ] ṅ  Ṅ	ञ [ɲ] ñ  Ñ	ण [ɳ] ṇ  Ṇ	न [n] n  N	म [m] m  M	nasal stops
	य [j] y  Y	र [r] r  R	ल [l] l  L	व [ʋ] v  V	semi-vowels
	श  [ɕ] ś  Ś	ष [ʂ] ṣ  Ṣ	स [s] s  S		sibilants
ह [ɦ] h  H					voiced fricative

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 which never occur word-initially (Ṇ Ṅ Ñ Ṝ) are useful only in Pāṇini contexts, where 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. The following five exceptions are due to 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.

Devanāgarī	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.

See also

• Devanagari transliteration
• Āryabhaṭa numeration
• Hunterian transliteration
• Harvard-Kyoto
• ITRANS
• National Library at Kolkata romanization
• ISO 15919
• Shiva Sutra
• International Phonetic Alphabet chart with pronunciation guide

External links

• Typing a macron - page from Penn State University about typing with accents
• IAST <==> Devanagari online converter (Transliteration tool)