IAST - Definition and Overview

IAST, or International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is the academic standard for writing the Sanskrit language with the Latin alphabet and very similar to National Library at Calcutta romanization standard being used with many Indic scripts. 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 Devanagari, 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 sign inventory is as follows:

a ā i ī u ū ṛ ṝ ḷ (vowels)

e o ai au (diphtongs)

h y v r l (voiced fricative + semi-vowels)

ñ m ṅ ṇ n m (nasals)

jh bh gh ḍh dh (voiced aspirate stops)

j b g ḍ d (voiced unaspirated stops)

kh ph ch ṭh th c ṭ t k p (unvoiced stops)

ś ṣ s (sibilants)

h (voiced fricative)

ṃ (Anusvara)

ḥ (Visarga)

See also

• Harvard-Kyoto
• ITRANS
• Shiva Sutra