Welcome to the online Sanskrit dictionary. This is an attempt to build up a repository of Sanskrit words and meanings in a simple, easy-to-extend format. We hope you find it useful and also contribute in adding more words to the collection. It is by no means a substitute for a printed dictionary or the famous on-line digitized dictionaries linked below.

The "Search" feature, available earlier, is temporarily disabled due to scripting problem. Till we sort it out, please use the complete files (text/ITX for search and others for display) or the Monier William's dictionary at Cologne which has both English and Sanskrit search engine.

A separate set of files is created only for numbers used in Sanskrit. Please see learning tools' section.

The complete dictionary is available in postscript / PDF / XDVNG / ITX / text formats.

There is a copyright on the dictionary files to the extent of preventing misuse on other internet sites and working as a disclaimer for the contents, as it was built by volunteers.

We recommend not to copy and post dictionary files on any other site since we periodically update and correct this list and we do not want different versions of file floating around the internet. We have seen people copying this work and calling it their own.

The different formats and their viewers are listed here. (If you want to view PDF file, please download it first and then view it independently.) These formats are updated more often than the file accessed by search utility. Please use text format for text search. There was an attempt to put the dictionary in a Visual Basic based script for easy search and display. Please refer to work by I. M. Chengappa.

Other Online Sanskrit Dictionaries and utilities

• Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon contains approx. 160.000 main entries from the Monier Williams Sanskrit Dictionary. The text is also available in HTML format at Richard Mahoney's site.

• Here is a list of abbreviations and symbols used in Monier Williams Sanskrit English dictionary.

• Capeller Sanskrit-English Dictionary contains approx. 50.000 main entries

• Louis Bontes' PC-based dictionary utility for Monier William's digitized dictionary at Cologne is available at http://members.ams.chello.nl/l.bontes/.

• The scanned images of entire Monier Williams Sanskrit English dictionary are available at Sripedia MW as a part of Million Books Project. Contact S. Sriram for more details on the Sripedia project and if you would like to volunteer for proofreading other documents. Also read to hearts' content the scanned Sanskrit books at Sanskrit section. Download of large files are requied.

• There is another online version of the MW data of the Cologne dictionary at http://muktaka.dyndns.org. It is much more readily accessible than the original Cologne webinterface and offers different search strategies.

• Chetan Pande has created an online interface to Monier William Sanskrit dictionary using AJAX scripting. As you type in Itrans (modified version), Kyoto, or single letter SLP system, the transliterated word is shown in Devanagari. A Copy to ClipBoard function for the Devanagari/eLatin Output makes it more User-Friendly. Search can be done using wild-cards ( left, right, all ) or the exact Word. There are other utilities at http://www.sktutilities.com/.

• Apte Sanskrit Dictionary .

• Monier Williams dictionary is also available on a CD at sudarshana.org at a nominal cost or advertised as Free at krishna.com with only shipping and handling cost.

• Dr. Kalyanraman's Lexicon of Indian Languages (Indo-European and Dravidian)
• Andre Signoret's French-Sanskrit dictionary. File to be downloaded: fraskt00.exe
• Gérard Huet's Sanskrit-French dictionary with on-line grammar. (Email) Devanagari and roman script. Read an annouuncement by Gerard for a summary.

• INDDICT A Sanskrit English dictionary, available at http://www.sanskritreader.de/ . with features "User can look up Sanskrit words (in diacritical form) or meanings. Entries can be edited. Update function to publish edited/new words and meanings. Full access to the database. Statistical details about the distribution of words in a (limited) text corpus."

• Klaus Glashoff has initiated a new online hypertext dictionary at http://spokensanskrit.de that allows user input in style of Wikipedia entries. Many phrases for conversational use are included. One can navigate from one word to the other by clicking on it. The display is in Unicode Devanagari as well as in transliteration format.

• Yashwant Malaiya's search interface for some of these dictionaries.

• Other related dictionaries (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati etc) are available at English Hindi dictionary (Stardict version), http://www.iiit.net/ltrc/downloads.html, http://www.iiit.net/madhavi/dl.html, and also at Hindi section. For details on these dictionaries (copyright, availability, updates, contacts, permission to use etc), please see the Hindi Dictionary Readme file. Please also see the ISCII interface.

  An improved interface is available at aksharamala site.

• The BharatiyaBhasha multilingual dictionary consisting of nearly 5000 common words in 14 different languages is available for download. There are quite a few tools developed at Technology Development for Indian Languages.

• A "Hindi Vishva Kosh," a Hindi pictorial encyclopaedia is available at http://www.erdcifast.net/vishwa/vishwa/homepage.asp. It is sponsored by Government of India. (The connection is slow.)

• A scanned Sanskrit German dictionary 1888 by Delbruck (PDF 30+Mb) and its OCR copy (MSWord 8+Mb)) is available upon request. Please send a note to sanskrit@cheerful.com for its access.

• Amarakosha or nAmali.ngAnushAsanaM, a Sanskrit thesaurus is available here. If you want to participate creating a dictionary from the text, please write to us.
• Resource Center For Indian Language Technology Solution (CCFILT, IIT Mumbai) has a unique online Hindi and Marathi shAbdabandha, a searchable Hindi and Marathi - English dictionary, in fact more than a conventional dictionary. "It gives different relations between synsets or synonym sets which represent unique concepts."
• The Aryabhusan school Marathi-English online dictionary, digitized at University of Chicago online collection, originally (1911) written by Shridhar Ganesh Vaze.
• Another Marathi English Dictionary, available online at University of Chicago web site is Molesworth's digitized Marathi-English dictionary.
• A webinterface to Hindi and Marathi dictionaries is available. There are other utilities developed as a part of Resource Center for Indian Language Technology Solutions at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (Mumbai). The searchable utilities include tutorials, wordnet group, most frequent words in Indian languages, Devanagari keyboard, Marathi and Hindi Corpora (try the word kushala) et cetera. The site is reviewed at Desh Dunia blogspot in Hindi.
• For an archive of Sanskrit dictionaries, readers and grammars in German, English and Russian join the newsgroup http://groups.google.com/group/Nagari (circa 4000 Mb Book Scans, devanagari fonts) Also, download free devanagari fonts and transliteration convert macros, OCR. http://nagari.southindia.ru (history and hi-res scans of Indian typography)

Other Sanskrit Dictionary Projects

• Report on the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon Project

• Sanskrit Dictionary-Database

• Digital Dictionaries of South Asia of University of Chicago has links and searchable contents of following languages: Baluchi, Khowar, Persian, Torwali, Bengali, Mar athi, Rajasthani, Urdu, Nepali, Sanskrit, Comparative, Hindi, Pali, Tamil, Kashmiri, Pashto, Telugu et cetera. Many more are forthcoming. These dictionaries are entered by contractors and the work to create searchable database is ongoing. The project is funded by the "International Research and Studies Program within the Office of International Education and Graduate Programs at the US Department of Education. The online versions of the four Sanskrit dictionaries were created for the DDSA as a project of the former Dharam Hinduja Indic Research Center of Columbia University under the generous sponsorship of the Hinduja Foundation. "

• A list of Sanskrit dictionary related links is compiled at multilingualbooks.com.

To Sanskrit Homepage