The Indian-Language Technologies has a major project for the Devanagari OCR (Optical Character Recognition) development. It is part of the Center of Excellence in Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR), at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The project is sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF), US and the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India. A sample truthing tool is available for download with different samples of OCR. The output is generated in Itrans based text file. The effort is led by Dr. Venugopal Govindaraju.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has developed a versatile tool for a working model of OCR for Tamil , Kannada (monolingual) and bilingual (Tamil+Roman) script in the sfotware lab at Medical Intelligence and Language Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, IISC, Bangalore-560012 Ph: 080 22932556 / 080 22932935 Contact Pofessor A. G. Ramakrishnan for a copy of the software It is free use by any nonprofit organization for digitizing books for the visually challenged or any other social objectives, after a signed agreement. Please see details in the PDF paper.

The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), India has also developed, among many excellent commercial products, an OCR called Chitrankan or at OCR research. The software is applicable currently to Devanagari with embedded English text and has potential for extension to other languages.

Some work is also in progress at IIIT, Hyderabad. Currently these OCRs can handle texts available in computer-fonts only. So it can be useful for the old Sanskrit texts.

Obviously there seem to be considerable difficulties.

Marcis Gasu�nshas done a Sanskrit OCR Software Review which will help to get the details of existing OCR efforts (September 20, 2013).

Many, like you, are eagerly waiting for the release of such technology. A reference. to Hindi OCR development
http://www.computer.org/tpami/tp1999/i0179abs.htm
http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive1997/msg00277.html Prof. Srihari & colleagues have done a lot of research in this area.
http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/~taohong/WWW/PAPERS/ICCIMA97.pdf You may want to contact him for details.
An attempt was made to develop Tibetan OCR at Bell laboratories. Please see Professor Kurt Keutzer's notes: Some Thoughts on Optical Character Recognition of Tibetan

Consider finding more information in Language Technology Laboratory at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur site. There was a presentation on the topic of Devanagari OCR in Proceedings of Symposium on Translation Support Systems STRANS-2002.

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We have provided almost all the files in Unicode format. Please see the individual categories with UNIC selection for each text. Down side to the release is that certain sites that do not follow netiquette have started whole-sale copying and reposting of these files on their site to promote themselves.

With so many "blog" sites available, one can generate a Unicode output using following writing pad sites. Almost all allow conversion or display in other Indian scripts. We prefer Aksharamukha site of Vinodh https://aksharamukha.appspot.com as that is well supported and Sanscript at http://www.learnsanskrit.org.

There are others notable sites too.

• Azhagi and Azhagi+ versions are available to type 16+ scripts, 24 languages Voice input feature, Windows-IPhone-Mac-Linux-Mobiles App support.
• Online keyboard for Vedic Sanskrit with svara/accent notations at lexilogos.com. The regular typing is using sanskrit devanagari keyboard.
• https://www.easysanskrittyping.com/ with Sanskrit Typing sanskrit-to-english-translation, English to Sanskrit Translation, Sanskrit to Hindi Translation, Hindi to Sanskrit Translation, free with Ads. Up to 500 characters can be translated into one request.
• http://www.giitaayan.com/x.htm, a subset of http://www.giitaayan.com HiTrans online proecssor.
• Volunteers at odia.org have developed online tool WebDhwani to convert text to display in Odia and Devanagari. The expected input is in Itrans.
• http://www.aupasana.com/software Ajit Krishnan's Mudgala IME. Download and install. Explore the site for many scannedbooks and software such as Mudgala Kosha.
• http://gumpad.org Pradyumna Revur's Gumpad. Download and install.
• http://www.aksharamala.com/ Srinivas Annam's Aksharamala. Now a freeware with professional features.
• http://service.vishalon.net/pramukhtypepad.htm Pramukhpad has a different way of input for the mapping. The site susanskrit.org uses it extensively.
• http://www.quillpad.com/ Quillpad for generating texts in most of the Indian scripts. Select the language and click on the "Launch Editor" button.
• Hindi Type Pad at http://www.fasttreck.net/hindi/ is an online processor to write Unicode text in Hindi as well as Gujarati.
• gujaratilexicon.org Gujarati language support with dictionary, word search using layout, specialized keypad.
• http://service.monusoft.com/HindiTypePad.htm Convenient non-Itrans typing table provided. Developed by monusoft.com.
• http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic from Google Indic Transliteration Labs. Requires a table for typing help. The method at blogger.com is superior to google method.
• Hindi virtual keyboard demo page prepared by Ilya S. Lebedev. It has Devanagari keyboards Hindi standard, Hindi(inscript), and Marathi layouts.
• http://www.maayboli.com/jslib/html/dvedt.html has Itrans input.
• Sanscript, an online transliteration tool, has Itrans, Harvard-Kyoto, IAST, and Devanagari input-output. This is a part of Learn Sanskrit Online site. The site is expanded at http://www.learnsanskrit.org.
• Transcription tool at http://www.ashtangayoga.info.
• Jagdeep Dangi has prepared a Prakhar_Devanagari_Font_Parivartak which has input set to standard Remington keyboard.
• DiCrunch is a converter for Balram, CSX, IAST, Harvard-Kyoto, and other Unicode fonts of Indian scripts prepared and used by developers of https://grantha.jiva.org.
• http://bhashaindia.com/ from Microsoft has many font conversion tools.

• See a comprehensive list at sanskritlinks.blogspot.com, dated March 6, 2010.
• Vishvas Vasuki has compiled various Sanskrit programming open resources including Natural Language Processing (nlp) at http://sanskritnlp.appspot.com. See "Transliteration tools" among many links.

Use Google Translator for translation between various languages including Hindi. Try converting word Sanskrit.

Unicode characters supporting Devanagari are available at
http://czyborra.com/unicode/characters.html and a note at this site. A "FAQ of Indic Scripts and Languages" is available at http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html. See also http://www.unicode.org/~emuller/southasia/vedic. Several examples of Vedic symbols found in different manuscripts are compiled in vaidika-evidence.pdf
A new mailing list has been formed on this subject. You can subscribe to it by writing to uniglyph-subscribe@egroups.com, and see their archive at http://www.egroups.com/group/uniglyph/.
Also please contact Jost Gippert of Titus project and Dominik Wuzastyk of indology mailing list (see groups.yahoo.com for rejuvenated group) for more information.

One useful link is http://www.tamil.net/people/sivaraj/unicode.html and the general newsgroups at mailgate, unicode.

For Roman with diacritic marks, there is a table that shows how to map every CS/CSX+ character to Unicode (sometimes requires multiple Unicode characters). ftp://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/pub/john/software/programs/ is the folder containing some utilities, ``csxp2ur.c'' is a C program that contains the table mapping. CSX+ itself is defined here: ftp://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/pub/john/software/fonts/csx+/ in the CSX+.def file.

The Unicode Standard 4.0 (2003) does not support accented Vedic texts. Only two Vedic accents were defined by the Unicode consortium, whereas approximate 50 Vedic accents/characters/svaras would be required for encoding the various Vedic texts. See Vedic Code Set (vedic.pdf) in http://tdil.mit.gov.in/pchangeuni.htm and 29 Samaveda accents listed in http://www.sanskritweb.de/sans99sv.pdf.

The Unicode Standard 4.0, published in August 2003, page 219, stipulates: "The Unicode Standard remains a super-set of the ISCII-1991 repertoire except for a number of new Vedic extension characters defined in IS 13194:1991 Annex G.Extended Character Set for Vedic. Modern, non-Vedic texts encoded with ISCII-1991 may be automatically converted to Unicode code points."

In October 2002, TDIL, India, submitted a draft concerning Vedic accents to the Unicode Consortion. This draft is documented in the file Vedic.pdf downloadable from the site http://tdil.mit.gov.in/pchangeuni.htm

Yet the Unicode Consortium rejected completely this draft made by TDIL in 2003 for the new Unicode Standard 4.0 published in 2003. What is more: The Unicode Standard 4.0 expressly excludes Vedic characters as stated in above quotation.

Question: If there are more than one Unicode fonts in your fonts system, is there any way to select one of your choice?

Web browsers have a setting that says which font to use for which encoding. Firefox has ability to have different font for each language, in each encoding. Go to Tools -> Options -> Content, click on Advanced, and in there, for example, you can choose the encoding (Unicode in this case), and then the language ("Devanagari"), and select the correct Unicode font you want.

In Internet Explorer, you can use Tools -> Internet Options, General tab, click on Font, and then select Language Script and font as needed.

These techniques apply only when no font is defined in the web page - if the web page specifies "Arial Unicode MS", then that setting will always (most of the time!) be used...

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Emotions apart, this is a too general request and the best way is to use the many search-engines available on the Internet. http://education.vsnl.com/ has a fascinating index of links to organizations from India.

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Sanskrit Bharati organizes such camps, correspondence courses, intensive conversational courses and publishes related documents. Please write to the coordinators at distance learning with Samskrita Bharati.

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A: For those with visual deficiency, many efforts are being made in providing help in reading books in Indian languages using the Braille script.

See some of the activities promoted for the blinds in videos prepared by Indian Association of Blind.

There are many institutions supporting the cause of blind people, some among them can be found in google search with "institutes for blinds in India" and "National Association for the Blind, India," National Association of Blind, India, National Association for the Blind in Mumbai with Braille printing press, NAB in Himachal Pradesh, NAB, Karnataka, Netraheen_Vikas_Sansthan in Jodhpur, Rajasthan India, Rakum school for the bilnd in Bangalore, blind reief association, Delhi http://www.visuallychallenged.com/ and so on. The printing of Devanagari based books present problem of conjuncts and construction.

Aadhyatmic Chetna Samiti has prepared several ancient spiritual books which are distributed freely among the blind personal institutions. So far, the following books are rendered in Braille script Sunder Kand (Ram Charit Manas Balmiki Ramayan), Hanuman Chalisa, Durga Chalisa, Stotra Piyusham, Prarthana and Arti Sudha, Vaidik Sandhya, Guru Geeta, Hari Geeta (2 volume), Lalit Sahasra Naam, Vishnu Sahastra Naam, Shiv Sahasranaam, Shree Krishna Chalisa, Adityahridayastotram, Astlaxmistotram, Sreemad Bhagvat Geeta (3 volume), (Sanskrit-Hindi, Sanskrit-English). The Samiti has established the Bank of Braille Books, CD and Audio Cassettes and thereby providing Braille Books CD and Audio Cassettes Free of cost. Samiti relies on the donation their established centers. The center is established by Swami Rambhadracharya who has also founded the Jagadguru_Rambhadracharya_Handicapped_University. The Samiti has outlined a systematic and reasonable requirements for their needs.

Additionally, these are listed as "Braille" producers in India. The list was prepared a while ago so they need to be verified.

Blind Relief Assoc.
Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg (near Hotel Oboroi)
110003 New Delhi
India
+91 11-436 1376 v

S.S.S.B.PUBLICATIONS,    
MR SUHAS LELE, C/O M/s 
M-A/43,1ST FLOOR, 
NR. ASHIANA TRADE CENTER,
ADITYAPUR, JAMSHEDPUR:832109,(JHARKHAND STATE),
INDIA   
TEL. No. :91-657-3130388,91-657-3110814,91-712-3115508.    
Email:  sss_bp2002@rediffmail.com 
http://www.geocities.com/suhas_lele2002/orderform.html

Rashtriya Drishtibaditarth Sansthan Bharat
116 Rajpur Rd
248 001 Dehradun
India
+91 135-24491 v
+95 135-29944 f

Blind Men's Association
Dr Vikram Sarabhai Rd. Vastrapur
380 015 Ahmedebad Gujarat
India
+91 79-440082 v
+91 79-448106 f

National Assoc for the Blind
11 Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Rd Worli Seaface
400 025 Bombay
India
+91 22-493 5370 v
+91 22-493 2539 f

Society for the Visually Handicapped
Apt 1B,12 Dover Rd.
700 019 Calcutta W. Bengal
India
+91 33-475 9581 v
+91 33-243 0787 f

B.K. Rath; Braille Press Project
City Hospital Road
760001 Berhampier Orissa

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We do not have a list of such sites as it is easier to do a search on the internet. Meanwhile you can browse some audios at:
on-line Sanskrit audio links
http://www.koelmusic.com/
http://www.neelam.com/devotional.htm
http://www.saigan.com/ under Heritage.
On the lighter, lokasa.ngraha side, the greetings sending feature at http://www.123greetings.com/, dgreetings.com, hindunet.org, ganeshchatrurthi.net, happydurgapuja.com, rakshabandhan.net, rakhi-greetings.com, ganeshchaturthi.net/, 101holidays.com, and dharmachintan (by Shri Stephen Knapp) may interest you in addition to the audio. Some of these greetings are sorted by religion, festivals, and deities.

A set of interesting screensavers and wallpapers are available at 1, 3, 4.

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Although one can easily come up with such a list, we have to find a purpose for doing it. It is easy to get carried away in the talk of "glorious vedic past" than implement the ideas in present conditions. There is a danger in "promoting" superficial understanding of our ancestors, how they lived, and the thoughts they carried out through verbal and written exchanges. Words convey ideas so if the ideas, which are written in Sanskrit, are conveyed, the words would come automatically, or need not be followed. If it promotes healthy transformation then it is acceptable and nurturing to individuals, but most of the time the zeal degenerates into mere outwardly "conversion" process.

The vocabulary has its own dynamism and has to follow its own course of assimilation into languages. So if the 2001 words are followed or portrayed with 2001 ideas with extended meanings, it will be a revolutionary undertaking. It will then be easier to circulate for others to judge.

As a reference, let us begin with a list with existing English words which can be identified to originate from Sanskrit. We will polish the list later with your input:

karma; guruu; pundita; yoga; raajaa; aarya; svastika; raaj (from raajya but raaj in hindi); dharma; jungle (from ja.ngala); buddha (although many mistakenly pronounce it as buDDhaa which in Hindi is a very old person!); nirvaaNa; juggernaut (jagganath).

Refer to two 1, 2) articles titled "Guru in English" by Saurin Desai on the influence of Sanskrit on English. He elaborates on the Sanskrit words which are commonly used in English: Mandala, Svastika, Guru, Yoga, Dharma, Arya, Ashram, Pundit, Kamasutra, Nirvana, Avatar, Mantra, Chakras, Singapore, Mandarin, Musk, Juggernaut, Cheetah, Bandana, Chintz, Loot et cetera.

The words mentioned above are what are called "loaned" words. Some others are "obliquely" related and we will need help from etymologists: mind to mana, man to manu, father to pitR^i, mother to maatR^i, brother to bhraatR^i, riti to ritual, ambrosia to amR^ita, three to tri, sept in september to sapta, oct to octa or ashhTa, dec in december deca to dasha (some scholars relate the months starting from March as original first month related to Vernal Equinox or Jyotish calendar with first month chaitra being in March. With this start, the 7th month is September, eighth is October, tenth is December et cetera. The current popular calendar, termed as Christian, changed the sequence, however), sugar to sharkaraa, medium ro madhyam, and so on.

Read articles on Sanskrit Puns by Richard Stoney (or here) of Orleans, CA. Some of the articles include "Sambacus, Etymology and Ethnobotany," "Gulliver's Travels and its Sanskrit Puns," "Sources of the Word Yahoo," "English Words derived from Sanskrit," "Hindu Linguistical Influence in Northern Europe: 1200-1600" and more. Also available is A theory that some English words are actually Sanskrit-like and English Words You Speak from Sanskrit.

As Latin is closely related to Sanskrit, English words originated from Latin may find a "cousin" in Sanskrit.

The following sites are useful:

• http://www.angelfire.com/ma/vivekananda/sanscrit.html or its mirror http://sanskrit.onweb.cx/
• http://www.consultsos.com/pandora/intro.htm
• http://www.takeourword.com/. See Issue092.html for interesting article by Melanie and Mike.
• Comparison made between Sanskrit and Latvian. Also read 1, 2, 3.

  Some additional words are
  

  Root Sanskrit Word
  Median Word in Latin(L) / Greek(G) / Arabic(A)
  Derived English Word
  Gau (meaning Cow) Bous (G) Cow
  Matr (meaning Mother) Mater (L) Mother
  Jan (meaning Generation) Genea (G) Gene
  Aksha (meaning Axis) Axon (G) Axis
  Navagatha (meaning Navigation) Navigationem (L) Navigation
  Sarpa (meaning Snake) Serpentem (L) Serpent
  Naas (means Nose) Nasus (L) Nose
  Anamika (means Anonymous) Anonymos (G) Anonymous
  Naama (means Name) Nomen (L) Name
  Manu (means First Human) ?? Man/Men/Human
  Ashta (meaning Eight) Octo (L) Eight
  Barbara (meaning Foreign) Barbaria (L) Barbarian
  Dhama (meaning House) Domus (L) Domicile
  Danta (meaning Teeth) Dentis (L) Dental
  Dwar (meaning Door) Doru Door
  Dasha (meaning Ten) Deca (G) Deca
  Madhyam (meaning Medium) Medium (L) Medium
  Kaal (meaning Time) Kalendae (L) Calendar
  Kri (meaning To Do) Creatus (L) Create
  Mishra (meaning Mix) Mixtus (L) Mix
  Ma (meaning Me/My) Me (L) Me
  Pithr (meaning Father) Pater (L) Father
  Bhrathr (meaning Brother) Phrater (G) Brother
  Loka (meaning Place) Locus (L) Locale
  Maha (meaning Great) Magnus (L) Mega
  Mala (meaning Dirt/Bad) Malus (L) Mal as in Malicious, Malnutrition, Malformed etc
  Makshikaa (meaning Bee) Musca (L) (Meaning Fly) Mosquito
  Mrta (meaning Dead) Mortis (L) Murder
  Na (meaning No) Ne No
  Nakta (meaning Night) Nocturnalis (L) Nocturnal
  Paad (meaning Foot) Pedis (L) Ped as in Pedestrial, Pedal etc
  Pancha (meaning Five) Pente (G) Penta, Five
  Parah (meaning Remote) Pera (G) Far
  Patha (meaning Path) Pathes (G) Path
  Raja / Raya (meaning King) Regalis (L) Royal
  Sama (meaning Similar) Similis (L) Similar
  Sapta (meaning Seven) Septum (L) Seven
  Sharkara (meaning Sugar) Succarum Sugar / Sucrose
  Smi (meaning Smile) Smilen (L) Smile
  SthaH (meaning Situated) Stare (L) (meaning To Stand) Stay
  Svaad (meaning Tasty) Suavis (L) Sweet
  Tha (meaning That) Talis (L) That
  Tva (meaning Thee) Dih Thee
  Vachas (meaning Speech) Vocem (L) Voice
  Vahaami (meaning Carry) Vehere (meaning to Carry) (L) Vehicle
  Vama / Vamati (meaning Vomit) Vomere (L) Vomit
  Vastr (meaning Cloth) Vestire (L) Vest
  Yauvana (meaning Youth) Juvenilis (L) Juvenile
  Narangi (meaning Orange) Naranj Orange
  Pippali (meaning Pepper) Piperi (G) Pepper
  Chandana (meaning Sandalwood) Santalon (G) Sandalwood
  Chandra (meaning Moon) Candela (L) (meaning light / torch) Candle
  Chatur (meaning Four) Quartus (L) Quarter
  Shunya (meaning Zero) Cipher (A) Zero
  a (prefix meaning .not. ex: gochara . agochara) a (L)(G) (prefix meaning .not.) a (prefix meaning .not. ex: theiest-atheist
  an (prefix meaning .not. ex: avashya . anavashya) un (L)(G) (prefix meaning .not.) un (prefix meaning .not. ex: do-undo
  Arjuna (meaning Charm of Silver) Argentinum (L) Argentinum . Scientific Name of Silver
  Nava (meaning New) Novus (L) Nova . New
  Kafa (meaning Mucus) Coughen Cough
  Mithya (meaning Lie) Mythos (G) Myth
  Thri (meaning Three) Treis (G) Three
  Mush (meaning Mouse) Mus (L) Mouse
  Maragadum (meaning Emerald) Smaragdus (L) Emerald
  Ghritam (meaning Ghee) ?? Ghee
  Srgalah (meaning Jackal) Shagal (Persian) Jackal
  Nila (meaning Dark Blue) Nilak (Persian) Lilac
  Srgalah Shagal (Persian) Jackal
  Man (Ma as in Malaysia) (meaning Mind) Mens (L) Mind
  Upalah (meaning Precious Stone) Opalus (L) Opal
  Vrihis (meaning Rice) Oriza (L) Rice
  Upalah (meaning Precious Stone) Opalus (L) Opal 
  

Please send your input/words to sanskrit@cheerful.com.

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Dr. Vineet Chaitanya [ vc@iiit.net ] is leading a group of developers. Some of his work is reflected at URL:
http://anu.tdil.gov.in/introduction.sureKa/anu_flyer.txt.html The most recently updated web material on anusaaraka at
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/download/desika/desika.htm and
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/download/shabdhabodha/shabdhabodha.html and to his earlier book on NLP for languages in India which he co-authored with Akshar Bharati and Rajeev Sangal (i.e. Natural Language Processing: A Paninian Perspective, Prentice-Hall of India, 1995) The tdil.gov.in site may be slow or down as it may not support 24 hours access.

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Emacs supports the Devanagari script and other languages from India. See www.gnu.org for the details. Otherwise the Itrans processor with LaTeX is portable to Unix/Linux and one can generate displays in postscript/PDF formats.

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Some of the documents carry translations in English. Most of these are provided by volunteers. We have also provided links to different sites where such translations are available, keeping us away from copyright issues. We do not encourage encoding "copyrighted" translations from printed books published by various religious organizations and publishing houses. They have done commendable work and our intention is only to provide the texts in Devanagari format with provision to do word searches from the encoded material.

For your information, there is an excellent discussion available on the Indology site about "myths of copyright".

Please see the following sites for translations of some of the documents. Investindia.com appears to be discontinued.

• Ananta Yoga site.
• Sanskrit classical literature translated by Desiraju Hanumanta Rao. Read the translations with Sanskrit & Roman transcripts and English verses, with word to word meanings, summary of each verse, and commentary of the ancient and of modern day scholars. The texts include expanded Valmiki Ramayana, Kalidas's Ritusamharam, and Jayadeva's Gitagovindam.
• http://www.hinduwebsite.com/upaindex.htm.
• http://www.punditravi.com/hindu_scriptures.htm.
• http://www.shivashakti.com/.
• Stories from Jatakakatha.(Search for Buddhist tales.)

Mantras are not to be translated but should be "earned" from a qualified teacher, and by sincerity and practice. If you are interested in any, please search and find that suits you. For example, see http://www.shivashakti.com/, http://www.vatikashaktipeeth.com/, Mantras and meanings, Syllables and their mystical meanings, http://www.sanatansociety.org/ Mantras and Mystery of Initiation and so on.

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Every font has a different keyboard mapping so it does not matter what fonts you have. If you viewed or copied/pasted the XDVNG display output in Word, you need the XDVNG font, which is available in https://sanskritdocuments.org/processing_tools/. Download the xdvng.ttf font file and save it in your c:\windows\fonts\ or such folder and restart the browser. The instructions are elaborated below.

Different formats of the files and their viewers are listed in https://sanskritdocuments.org/doc_9_formats.html, ,for example, the .pdf file needs Acrobat reader, .ps file needs Ghostview/Ghostscript combination.

You may like Itranslator which has nicecr fonts and better control for your Word output. You will need to use the encoded portion of ITX/TXT file and treat it as in input in Itranslator. Try it out. The software is available at http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/Itranslt.html.

There are installation instructions for the XDVNG fonts in the procecssing_tools folder.

In general, to install a true type font on Windows95/98

• Start by downloading the .ttf font file to a convenient folder (e.g. download)
• Next, select [Start]--[Settings]--[Control Panels] and open the [Fonts] folder by double-clicking it. When the [C:\Windows \Fonts] window comes up, click on [File], and click on [Install New Font...]
• In the [Add Fonts] dialog box that will appear, select the drive letter and folder where you placed the truetype font file (.ttf). After a moment the font will appear in the [List of Fonts] window. 
• Click on it to select it, then Click the [OK] button to install the font. After a moment, the font will be installed in Windows and will be available to any Windows program under the font name.

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There are two versions of Mahabharata online. There is one Kumbhagonam edition and another a critical edition of Mahabharatar. The critical edition was originally published by Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) and was encoded by Professor Tokunaga of Japan. It was further edited and processed by Prof. John Smith of UK and Shree Devi Kumar. BORI holds copyright on the text. Both the versions are available in Devanagari as well as other language scripts' display
https://sanskritdocuments.org/mirrors/mahabharata/ . Also explore other links from https://sanskritdocuments.org/sites/, especially giirvaani.

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You can use following interfaces to generate Devanagari script of your name: web-interface, Vinay Jain's HiTrans on giitaayan.com, Sanscript, aksharamukha online tools or install an excellent PC-Windows freeware available at Omkarananda Ashram sites at http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/Itranslt.html or Baraha is another non-Itrans based software tool. See others listed on this page. These software allow to write Devanagari letters with control over the letter size and have well devloped publishing quality fonts. It is also very easy to install them. Many fine artists and tattoo artists have used these, although for a Sanskrit student this practice appears odd.

For offline use to generate Devanagari text (Marathi Hindi Sanskrit), try https://nityin.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/google-offline-typing-tool-for-indian-languages/ http://www.vishalon.net/Download.aspx http://innolea.com/transliteration-typing-tools-for-hindi-regional-indian-languages/6766

Ubuntu-Linux has IBUS suitable to edit texts offline in various Indic fonts. Here are instructions to install and use it

1. Install ibus-m17n from the Software Center.
2. Add language(s) from the Settings - eg Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi (and 50+) - + choice of devanagari, itrans, IAST, HK, phonetic
3. Log out, and Re-log in.
4. Open any editor - eg gedit, Libre Office Writer.
5. Choose Input from the drop-down language icon in Menu bar
6. Press Control+Space, and type after choosing font, etc.

   Google Input Tools for Windows is currently available for 22 different languages: Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Persian, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Tigrinya and Urdu. (June 2015) More than one language of input tools can be installed on the same client machine.

   There are commercial sites performing tattoo design with Sanskrit Devanagari script for a fee, such as Scott Jones' Tattoo by design in UK or Jaydeep's onlinetattootranslations in Chennai, India, or Vince Hemingson's vanishingtattoo, Vivek Kumar's 2indya.com et cetera. Kiran's freetranslationblog is also available for free translation of words/sentences and follows a voluntary spirit. All consider different languages and art forms. http://www.sanskrittattoo.info/ is very informative site and has many examples listed. There are other sites to mention : authenticsanskrittattoos.com, Sanskrit Tattoos at at pinterest, 1, 2, 3, 4, Saad's gallery, Spiritual and Sanskrit Tattoos, spiritual-tattoos, et cetera.

   There are various opinions about tattooing. The discussion about tattooing with Devanagari script came in sharp focus due to the tattoo of David Beckham's wife's name Victoria. Phonetically, the tattoo is correct, unless Britishers pronounce Vi as in "we". The distinction in the sound "we" (wicket, wicked, wish) should be made with "v" (vindicate, vital, viscous, similar to wheat, white). (In contrast, "ve" in Veda is pronounced and written as "way" and not "ve" as in vendetta.) Listen to an audio of the name Victoria and see the pronunciation guide. The discussion about its incorrectness at different sites such as beckham-magazine or audarya is out of ignorance and mainly because many Hindi speakers refuse to accept the conjunct w+h as v in their pronunciation. It is true that there is no word in Hindi staring with the conjunct, but Devanagari script, with its phonetic base, is much more powerful and allows pronunciations more than that of a Hindi speaker.

   The discussion apart, we would like you to be more aware of the art form, and to express yourself and your image through a tattoo. See the sites for example: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, et cetera. The question as why Devanagari tattoo (which is mostly meant as tattooed text in Devanagari script not Sanskrit, as Sanskrit or Hindi is a language and not a script)

   1. Please consider the pros and cons of your choice for a tattoo as it is hard to erase. See a site. Read 5 things to check. There is a Sanskrit tattoo artist reference with name, site, and contact information. Here is a list of Common Errors.
   2. One infamous example of how a less knowledgeable person can cause problem can be seen at Wrong Sanskrit Tattoos. Marcos Carvalho, who knows little Sanskrit, in fact almost does not know it but sells Sanskrit translations. A friend, also from Brazil, commented, "He is not exactly a good guy... Thanks to him there are lots of people here showing mispelled sanskrit phrases or names on their bodies."
   3. The Sanskrit word meanings are not unique and it depends on the context, e.g. love, peace may mean different to different people. The translator may have his flaws in providing the translation. World peace is also a fiction or a belief.
   4. Understanding the real purpose of what you want to do will help.
   5. We hope that the tattoo in Devanagari will lead you to learn Sanskrit and study its literature as well.
   
   Please let us know links, information, and details of additional tools you have come across by writing to (sanskrit at cheerful dot c om).

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   Q: Are there Android and Apple iSO applications (Apps) for learning Sanskrit?
   

   There are plenty of well prepared applications for learning Sanskrit. Many of the links are given in the learning tools section and not given here to avoid duplication. Please check up on this link searching for "Android and iPhone Applications (Apps) for learning Sanskrit" in the end.

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   Q: I am looking for place, within a reasonable distance from my hometown, that offers an introductory course in Sanskrit. Do you have any suggestions?
   Can you send a list of organizations that offer correspondence courses?

   For serious studies, please consult Gudrun B�hnemann's Sanskrit studies list for Worldwide Universities and institutions offering Sanskrit courses and another at Sanskrit and Indological research institutes in India.
   

   There are other places where correspondence courses are offered. Some of them are

   • http://www.samskritabharatiusa.org/ Samskrita Bharati
   • http://sanskrit.nic.in/main/distance_education.htm Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan
   • http://www.sanskrit-academy.com/correspondence.shtml Sanskrit Academy
   • http://easysanskrit.chinfo.org/cif/ Chinmaya Mission

   The Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, National Sanskrit Establishment, Department of Education, Government of India's site has many links to the organizations and individuals who are instrumental in promoting Sanskrit in India.

   In addition, the following information will be useful:

   Download/or-read-online Charles Wikner's tutorial available at
   https://sanskritdocuments.org/learning_tutorial_wikner/index.html This brings you upto the level of being able to read Monier Williams' dictionary.

   Master Sanskrit Easily written and presented by Dr. Narayan Kansara of Ahmedabad. This is an extensive 301 page tutorial and is well formatted for two sided booklet printing. The entire text is in Roman with Diacritics. Its details are summarized in the Preface text file. Get the PDF files as Title, Parts 1, 2, and 3.

   aravindAshrame sa.nskR^itam at http://sanskrit.sriaurobindoashram.org.in/ is a site for various online display and audio of Sanskrit tutorials, magazine from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. The publications can be ordered from SABDA, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry - 605 002, India. For Ordering Information http://www.sabda.in.

   Other tutorials are at
   

   • http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/tutor.php, with directly accessible lessons.
   • Introduction to Sanskrit series at Sringeri Vidya Bharati Foundation (SVBF) : Units 1 through 16. They are recast in a newer site format and are available at http://svbf.org/svbf_journal.php. These tutorials are available at Introduction to Sanskrit by Shri (Dr.) M.R. Dwarakanath.
   • The Learn Sanskrit Series is developed by Mr. Vasudeva Bhat on ourkarnataka site. There are 39 lessons (Nov 2003) which are also translated in Kannada. For Kannadigas, this is an excellent site.
   • Sanskrit tutorial mirror Aming Tu cbs@ccms.ntu.edu.tw
     http://pears2.lib.ohio-state.edu/SANSKRIT/e-homep2.htm
   • Vidyavrikshah site mirror at
     http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/tutor.php.
   • A step by step lessons in Sanskrit are provided at http://www.chitrapurmath.net/. A registration (free) is needed for accessing all the lessons.
   • Dennis Waite dennis.waite at virgin.net has prepared a PDF document Spiritual Seeker's Essential Guide to Sanskrit.
   • Dr. Sudhir Kaicker, Director, Computer Centre, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, has coordinated development of a Sanskrit tutor called SanskritaPradipika for PC-Windows. It is available for download (after free registration) at http://www.sanskrit-lamp.org. The file size is over 20 Mb.
   • Gabriel Pradiipaka and Andres Muni have compiled a procedure to Learn Sanskrit Language Step by Step. The FAQ written by Gabriel may be inspiring for new students. The site includes details in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

   You may also want to take a Sanskrit text and study it word by word.

   Many useful self-study tutorials are linked from learning tools of this site.

   Following links cover distance learning / correspondence courses / personal coaching / colleges and universities for Sanskrit studies
   

   • Sanskrit Bharati
   • Arsha Vidya Gurukulam
   • American Sanskrit Institute
   • UK India
   • Chinmaya Mission, Sanskrit Home study course.
   • Maharishi Univesrsity of Management, Sanskrit Home study course.
   • Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan.
   • BA and MA , M.Phil listed in webindia123.com search site.
   • Sanskrit Academy, Seven Levels of Sanskrit Courses offered by Dr. Sarasvati Mohan.
   • www.vedic-academy.com, Sanskrit Basic Course - Associate Degree.
   • Distance learning for Sanskrit from http://studynation.com provides a long list of Universities and colleges which offer degree courses in Sanskrit.
   • http://www.language-school-teachers.com provides personal contact information of teachers worldwide. Needs registration.
7. Following are useful books for self study
   • Links to many Learn Sanskrit Books downloadable.
   • Girvana Bharati An Introduction by Mehta, Mahesh
   • Learn Sanskrit in 30 Days
   It is important for you to commit for the life long studies rather than just taking a course or reading tutorials, here and there.

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   Q: When I see an html format file with XDVNG fonts I see garbled text although I do have XDVNG installed on my Windows system. Why is that?
   Q: Why do I see the xdvng html page with spaces between the text?

   In your web browser, check if the [User Defined] category in [Menu]/[View]/[Encoding] on Internet Explorer browser, and [Menu]/[View]/[Character Set] on Netscape browser, is selected. If it is not, select it. You may have to check it each time that the characters get displayed wrongly!

   Some of the .html files are coded with .pfr portion which does not require such menu selection, but we have found that on some computers it does not work. The menu selection is hence reliable method.

   Many ask us about the keyboard map of the XDVNG font. We do not have keyboard layout for XDVNG since the text is not directly entered using the fonts. Search the elemental typefaces which resembles the character map of the font. Character map is Windows feature and is often executed with [Start]/[Run] and type charmap. If this does not activate it, you will need to install it from Windows installation CD.

   For those keen on using Internet explorer, may find that the html/XDVNG text displays improperly. The displayed texts show blank spaces arbitrarily and gets harder to read. Ulrich Stiehl has modified the original Xdvng.ttf font to take care of font display bugs of Microsoft's faulty Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.0 inserting "random spaces" into html files. The modified fonts are available in ht processing_tools_fonts section. The changes are not uniformly applied to all the files and reader is requested to download and edit the html file with XDVNG letters changed to XDVNGmod and redisplay. The new Xdvng font versions are not needed for other browsers, as the "random spaces" bug is specific to Internet Explorer, but it does not harm to use the new Xdvng fonts with other browsers.

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   Q: Why don't you include Kannada Tamil, Telugu documents on your site in the other languages category? How can one enter texts in different language scripts?

   We already have Sanskrit documents displayed in many language scripts. Select language of your choice by the right most item in the drop down menu at https://sanskritdocuments.org/.

   Google Input Tools and Google Indic Keyboard App are popular ways to enter indic texts. They allow audio to text conversion with good accuracy.

   Good tools are available at https://aksharamukha.appspot.com and http://learnsanskrit.org/tools/sanscript which allow to generate or convert texts in your favorite language script.

   This site transliterates from one Indian Unicode Script to another and English. One can transliterate Sanskrit documents to English, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada etc. If a Stotra is typed into one of the Unicode languages, it can be easily converted into another as above.

   https://rajbhasha.net allows online Hindi Unicode typing with voice. There is an App that can be downloaded and installed for offline use.

   In addition, you may want to explore the following links:
   http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~kulki/kannada/kanindex.html There is an excellent package to generate Kannada and Devanagari texts at http://www.baraha.com/ For Tamil, use Tamil1, Tamil2.

   For Telugu, use Telugu1. Telugu stotras are available at http://www.stotralahari.com.

   Also, get the scanned books from the older Digital Library of India sites linked from with hundreds of scanned books.

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   Q: The site seems to be directed to those who already know something about Sanskrit and are pursuing the serious study of it. However, I find no introduction to the language, no history, no discussion of the grammar and syntax nor any discussion of its relation to other Indo-European (or other) languages.

   To remove the misconception, please see the following tutorial by Charles Wikner and links to other tutorials given above which are useful entries for a beginner.

   Charles Wikner's tutorial
   https://sanskritdocuments.org/learning_tutorial_wikner/index.html

   Other Sanskrit tutorials are listed above.

   There are some excellent articles available at American Sanskrit Institute along with study guides and audio/graphic courses.

   Please see a short List of Words Common to Indo European languages. A collection of articles related to Antecedents of Sanskrit Language is available at Hinduwebsite.com. It includes relation of Greek, English, Latin and other European languages with Sanskrit. There is also a www.Hindu-Forum.org that can give additional links.

   We have not been able to get enough information about the language history, grammar et cetera. We have made a list of projects at https://sanskritdocuments.org/ but have only had occasional response from the contributors. Some of the information might be covered on other sites. Thanks for your note so as we can think of how we can add or link the material you have mentioned.

   It may also be useful to look at the dictionaries at most visited page https://sanskritdocuments.org/dict/.

   There is a list of Sanskrit Bloggers prepared in General Sanskrit links page which cover subjects related to current events and are simpler than scholarly articles. Some special links are included in a separate blog https://sanskritlinks.blogspot.com.

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   Q: Can you pursue a separate project on "Sanskrit & computer science"?

   We have very limited information on this topic. We would certainly like to have the details as a subgroup on the topic of Sanskrit and computer science. Dr. Vinoy is going to provide some additional information.

   Dr. Vineet Chaitanya is active in Hyderabad, IIIT (information technology). Prof. R. Kalyanakrishnan is at (rkk@acharya.iitm.ac.in) IITMadras who has developed multilingual software at
   http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/ They have a page on Linguistics and Computation
   

   We found couple of useful articles at Bharat Bhasha homepage related to Computer and languages from India. Another mentionable work in computational linguistics is of Dr. Girish Nath Jha and his students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India.

   Here is an addition from Dr. Vineet Chaitanya of IIIT, Hyderabad: As far as our group is concerned, we have been emphasizing role of Sanskrrit Shastras and not of the Sanskrit language as such. We have presented some information in a book "Natural Language Processing: A Paninian Perspective," Akshar Bharati, Vineet Chaitanya, Rajeev Sangal, Prentice-Hall of India, 1995.

   Dr. Rajeev Sangal is coordinating the project. He is the Director of Language Technologies Research Center (L.T.R.C) at I.I.I.T Hyderabad. His E-mail address is sangal@iiit.net

   There has not been any M.Tech project on much desired `sandhi viccheda'. Mrs. Amba Kulkarni has done her M.Tech project on building a bridge on Navya-Nyaaya and FirstOorder Predicate calculus under Prof. Sangal's supervision at I.I.T. Kanpur.

   No significant work has been done on `samaasa vigraha' either, in our group except some observations and notes by Prof. K.V. Ramkrishnamachayulu.

   At I.I.T. Kanpur Dr. D.K.Jha was the only one Sanskrit scholar in the project staff. There was a joint project with Central University of Hyderabad and I.I.T. Kanpur on anusaaraka (an approach for a kind of Machine Translation among languages from India, the inspiration for which was derived from Paninian insight).

   Now at L.T.R.C./I.I.I.T. we do have a number of Sanskrit post graduates working with us as a part of two year training program in which we try to identify the concepts from Sanskrit Shastras which may be relevant for current research and developement work in Natural Language Processing. Rashtriya Sanskrita Vidyapeetha, Tirupati has deputed Prof. K.V. Ramkrishnamachayulu for this activity. Dr. G. Umamaheshvar Rao of Central University Hyderabad is also participating in this work.

   From Vineet Chaitanya.

   IIT Kanpur organizes Symposium on Translation Support Systems (STRANS 2002) which may add to this information Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur India Feb 24-26, 2002 http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/strans.html

   Some of the broad level topics
   of interest to the symposium are listed below:
   
   * Translation Strategies
   - Rule based/Knowledge based
   - Example/Corpus based
   - Hybrid
   - English to Indian-languages
   - Indian-Languages to English
   - MAT, MAHT, HAMT
   - Pre and Post-editing needs and techniques
   * Word-net
   * Lexical Data-base Creation and Management
   * Morphological Analyzers
   * Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval
   * NLP Grammar
   * Correction of Ill-formed Sentences
   * Corpus Analysis, Tagging
   * Parallel Corpus Analysis, Statistical Dictionary
   * Front-end Systems
   - OCR
   - Speech
   - Coding schemes (ISCII, Unicode)
   - Other Interfaces
   
   * Back-end Systems
   - Speech
   - Display, Printing, Formatting
   - Fonts
   
   * Web Based Applications
   * Aids for Document Creation
   - Spell checkers
   - Thesaurus, Terminology aids
   - Grammatical aids
   - Editing software
   
   * Transliteration Among Indian-Scripts
   - Indian-Scripts to English
   - English to Indian-Scripts
   
   * Societal Aspects
   * Ergonomic Aspects
   
   
   General Chairs
   
   S.G. Dhande,Director IIT Kanpur
   Om Vikas, MIT, Delhi
   
   Program Committee  Chair
   R.M.K.Sinha, IIT Kanpur (E-mail: rmk@iitk.ac.in)
   
   STRANS 2002
   Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
   IIT Kanpur-208016 (INDIA)
   Fax: (+91-512)-590725
   Phone: (+91-512)- 597174 / 597642
   

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   Q: I would like to undertake a Sanskrit related project. Could you provide a list?

   Please see a comprehensive list of projects. We also have made a list of pending items to help volunteers choose from our immediate needs. Please email us at sanskrit@cheerful.com to ask for the status of these projects if you are willing to pursue one. We have been successful in finding only handful of volunteers who have committed to a project on long term basis. We hope that you will have time and interest to look into this list carefully and will consider participating. If you are serious about volunteering, we recommend that you copy the form and send us the information over email. Additional help is available here.

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   Q: Why are there so many types of display formats?
   What do the ITX, PS, PDF acronyms mean?
   How should I view the Sanskrit documents?

   The purpose of various formats is to allow viewers from different computer platforms and browsers to see Devanagari text. A list of formats, their explanation, and links to viewers is give here. To have complete capability to view documents in any format, we suggest that you install

   • Itranslator99 or newer Itranslator2003. This is to view encoded text files, marked ITX or TXT. ITX files are used as input to Itrans processor to generate Devanagari documents.
   • Ghostscript and Ghostview postscript viewer from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/index.html. Download and install gs601w32.exe and gsv31w32.exe from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/get601.html Depending on the version, please modify the numbers 601 and 31 in these links. These will allow you to get a good display as well as a sharp printout. Get XDVNG fonts to view HTML display documents.
   • Acrobat Reader to view documents in PDF format.

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   Q: What is the Itrans scheme and how is it different than Itrans or Itranslator software?
   How do you get files in different formats once the text is encoded in Itrans scheme?

   Itrans or ITRANS is a freeware program developed by Avinash Chopde, initially to fulfill wishes of Hindi songs enthusiasts to exchange Hindi songs over email (ASCII) and have them processed to display in Devanagari script on any browser. It subsequently encompassed other language scripts as suitable fonts were freely available. It is mainly a processor which takes help of TeX/LaTeX capabilities to generate postscript files as display.

   The scheme used to enter the Devanagari or other scripts is known as Itrans scheme. A sample table is given here. Please see a concise table showing ITRANS encoding for all supported languages and fonts or documents with detailed transliteration map for each language separately from Avinash Chopde's ITRANS site.

   Avinash has also built a PC based commercial software in collaboration with Shreekrishna Patil. Mr. Patil, a wirey-firey 80+  aged youth, has prepared fonts for almost all language scripts from India.

   Recently, two devoted Swami-s (monks) of Omkarananda Ashram of Rishikesh, India, developed a PC based freeware to generate WYSIWYG text in Devanagari using the same input scheme. The software is known as Itranslator99 or newer Itranslator2003 and is available at Omkarananda Ashram sites http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/Itranslt.html, http://www.geocities.com/omkarananda/ or http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/Itranslt.html and is an excellent addition if you have a PC with Windows.

   Coming to the question of preparing documents from ASCII text, A file with extension .txt, having the encoded text, is prepared with first two lines for English and Devanagari titles, and ## to complete Devanagari mode. The text is subsequently passed through the following process.

   .txt -----> .itx -----> .tex -----> .dvi -----> .ps -----> .gif
         |            ^           ^           ^        |----> .pdf
   .inf -+            |           |           |        PSTOGIF
   .hdr -+            |           |           |        PSTOPDF
                      |           |           |
                   ITRANS       LATEX       DVIPS
   

   Volunteers who enter the text in .txt file either using any editor or Itranslator editor are requested to proofread the document using postscript file.

   Although the above process generates displayable documents for on-line purpose, the output is not useful for Windows/MS Word based programs. The output from Itranslator however can be cut and pasted in MSWord or so to reformat the display.

   Couple of popular online conversion tools for many Indian language scripts are http://learnsanskrit.org/tools/sanscript/ Sanscript and https://aksharamukha.appspot.com/ Aksharamukha.

   For offline use to generate Devanagari text (Marathi Hindi Sanskrit), try https://nityin.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/google-offline-typing-tool-for-indian-languages/ http://www.vishalon.net/Download.aspx http://innolea.com/transliteration-typing-tools-for-hindi-regional-indian-languages/6766

   There are other options available at Sparshabhumi site under the category Devanagari & other languages scripts.

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   Q. Where can I purchase audio-video CD/DVD/cassettes for learning Sanskrit?

   Following are some of the resources regarding audio-visual presentation for Sanskrit learning. This is given only as a reference and does not indicate endorsement of any sort. However, we like to promote them by presenting here as it makes the learning experience modern and possibly easier based on previous background. There is no subsitute for hard work when learning and understanding Sanskrit is concerned.

   1) Samskrita Bharati has released a set of two CDs useful for the continued learning of Sanskrit by both beginner and advanced students. Please see http://www.samskrita-bharati.org/. To buy this multimedia learning tool, send a check for $40 along with your name, address, phone number and email ID to

         Learn Samskritam CDs
         Samskrita Bharati
         4204 Latimer Avenue
         San Jose, CA 95130 

   Contact Govinda Rao for additional information.

   2) Another CD is available from Manikarnika Srinivasan at a nominal cost about $20. The CD comes with a Sanskrit font called "MUDRIKA" and has about 5000 sound clips for the words and alphabet pronounciation. It has alphabet animation , topics on grammar - Sandhi, Samaasa. Shabhas, Verb, a small dictionary etc. His contact information is

         M.Srinivasan
         16 WestWood Ave
         Stony Brook, NY 11790.
         Tel - 631-233-6760

   3) A substantial amount of information about learning Sanskrit including audio cassettes and manuals are available from Vyas Houston, director of American Sanskrit Institute.

8. Radio for learning Sanskrit via Hindi is available on internet at http://shoutcast.com/radio/sanskrit.

   Sanskrit learning at Matchless-Gifts.com includes Learn Sanskrit for Beginners (CD-Rom), Bhashika: The Complete Course for Spoken Sanskrit (2 CDs), Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary on CD-Rom, and The Wonder that is Sanskrit (2 CD-Roms) at reasonable cost including shipping. (It also has Hindi Guru and Learn Spoken Hindi).

   If you have additional information about such sources please let us know so that we can distribute to interested individuals.

   A self-learning CD SanskritashikShikA, http://www.rsvidyapeetha.ac.in/t/advsse.htm produced by Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Rs 260 or 12USD+shipping.

   There are many interesting video clips available at YouTube.com and elsewhere. For example, see
   

   • Bhojanapaddhati in samskritam, Bhagvadgita Jayanti, Dakshinamurthy description in Sanskrit by two young boys.
   • Sanskrit Vowels and Matra - Chapter 1.
     There are others non-Sanskrit but still interesting videos at
   • Ustream.tv (sAhitya pariShad), also for Sanskrit Roundtable channel set by Les Morgan
   • cultureunplugged.com, (Raga of Narmada River, Kumar and Kabir (Koi-Sunta Hai), Kabir)
   • apollodeas.com (Water)
   • youtube.com (various, actually no need to specify)
   • ted.com(Water harvesting)
   • Introduction to Vipassana Hindi, English at http://www.vridhamma.org/ Vipassana Research Institute.

   Additionally, there are newspapers and magazines in Sanskrit published daily/fortnightly/monthly/quarterly or less frequent. See a well documented list prepared by Venetia Ansell. If you have any contact details on these, please send a note to venetia.ansell at gmail dot com . There was a list of Sanskrit periodicals which was printed in the sragdharA November 2011 issue (from Bhuwaneshwar, Orissa, India) one which can be considered a list of periodicals in Sanskrit which appeared in 1981 publication of Gandivam, a journal published by Sampurnananda Sanskrit University.

   There are some which have online contacts.

   • News in Samskritam - Hindusthan Samachar, prepared by Dr.Jayaram from Chennai office. Contact hs.sampadak@gmail.com.

   • Vaak a weekly published by Shri Buddha Dev Sharma from Haridwar. (fortnightly, Rs 100 per year, 2010).

   • Sudharma, daily Sanskrit newspaper, all in Sanskrit. Available in twitter at http://twitter.com/sanskritnews.

   • Sambhashan Sandeshaha, Sanskrit Bharati Bangalore. http://samskritam.in/ for older issues are avaialble in DjVu format. Subscribe. A link is in https://sanskritlinks.blogspot.com on May 1, 2010.

   • Jahnavi, a Sanskrit e- journal, published by Bipin Kumar Jha, Cell for Indian Science and technology in Sanskrit, IIT, Powai/Mumbai/Bombay.

   • Chandamama, monthly. chandamama.in.

   • Panchamritam, fortnightly, panchaamritam-owner@yahoogroups.com

   • vishvavANI, a Sanskrit webzine which has been brought out by students from various US universities.

   • sa.nskR^itavartamaanapatram at http://www.sasnkritnewspaper.com, (yes notice the typo sasn instead of sans! They are paying for it too!) a Sanskrit newspaper published daily since July 25, 2010. The daily is edited by Shri Prafulla Purohit, and Dr. J. K. Bhatt, Dr. M. L Vadekar. Contact : Chirag Hospital, Second floor, Mahajan Galli, Ravpura, Vadodara, 390001, Phone 9376217477, 9998571963. The previous newspaper copies are avaialble in archives. Please subscribe and support. Shri Prafulla Purohit is also busy with devsAyujjam (notice no a after v), a Sanskrit monthly, for almost over there years. Download March 2010, April 2010 as sample issues. Others can be requested by subscribing. Let us know if you find more information.

   • There is another daily published from Surat, called vishvasya vR^ittAntam, edited by D. C. Bhatt, 55, Swami Narayan Society, Vibhag 1, Sheri 2, Puna Gam Road, Surat (mobile 9898478454). Contact D. C. Bhatt sanskritdailynewspaper@gmail.com. Here are some samples of the paper http://www.slideshare.net/PracticalSanskrit/documents, also linked from Practical Sanskrit blog.

   • sArasvatI suShamA, a quarterly Sanskrit Research Journal from Sampurnanand Sanskrit University. Not sure if this is still pubilshed.

   • Samvid, a Sanskrit Quarterly published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Contact : Samvid, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kulapati K.M.Munshi Marg, Chowpatty, Mumbai 400 007, Phones: 23631261 / 23634462. Fax : 022 2363 0058 email: bhavan@bhavans.info . Read the latest issue of Bhavans Journal .

   • Lokabhasha Prachara Samitih at http://samskrita.co.in publishes a monthly magazine lokabhASha sushrIH from Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. A sample scanned copy is available here (4Mb). Contact Subhendu Rath for additional information: LOKABHASA Prachar Samithi, Sarasvati Vihar, Barapada, Bhadrak, Odisha, India- 756113 E-mail: lokabhasha@samskrita.co.in

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   Q. Do you have Sanskrit learning support for those who speak Spanish, French, Latvian, German, Portuguese, or Russian?

   Please see The Sanskrit Website-El Sitio S�nscrito en la Web Spanish-Sanskrit-Portuguese learning site maintained and regularly updated by pradIpaka (Gabriel X) and Andr�s Muni.

   Alejandro Gutman from Buenos Aires, Argentina has developed El Portal de la India Antigua, dedicated to diffuse the achievements of the ancient Indian civilization in the Spanish speaking world. (English translation using Babelfish.yahoo.com.) The site provides many links to books (about 300) and articles (150, and more coming) related to ancient India and those freely available on the web, commented briefly in order to orient people in an increasingly confusing forest of publications. Alejandro has written a few articles on the topics such as cosmogony and eschatology in the Rigveda and translation of several complete hymns. One section intends to be a step by step Sanskrit course based on his own experiences and difficulties with the language. An extensive number of lessons, downloadable in pdf format, are planned.

   Martí nCesar Rolando presents a word by word Spanish translation of verses at http://ksetre.blogspot.com/ for the convenience of Spanish speaking student. He is studying with Alejandro and wishes to show "a process to achieve greater understanding and better translations" of Sanskrit works in Spanish.

   Hugo Labate has translated various upanishads and other Vedic texts in Spanish in a double column format.

   For French, please see Gerard Huet's dictionary, on-line grammar, and links and Andre Signoret's interactive dictionary and grammar sites. Yann Leglise, Yann.Leglise@wanadoo.fr has translated Charles Wikner's Sanskrit introductory into French. It is available in postscript and pdf formats.
   See Tantrisme et cultes de Ganesh dans l'hindouisme for Diverses invocations on http://ganapati.club.fr/.

   For German, see Sanskrit Deklinationstrainer and Ulrich Stiehl's site in reference to the excellent book Sanskrit-Kompendium and sample pages.

   The translation of yogasutras of Patanjali, its commentaries, and links are available in various languages such as Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czechian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Malyalam, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish et cetera at the Hrih Yogasutras of Patanjali Archive site http://www.hrih.net. There is another in Hindi by Surinder Shanker Anand at http://sites.google.com/site/shankyandy/Patanjal-Yog that is well documented. Also see various texts and useful information in download section. Subhash Mittal has recorded entire Yogasutra in audio format at Yoga Sutra Study Group site.

9. http://www.geetarahasya.com/ hosts Bhagvadgita text and translation in various languages such as Sanskrit, Assamee, Bangali, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malyalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Chinese, Persian, Norweigan, Dutch, German, Russian, Nepali, French. Additional sections include Books on Gita, related articles, audio section et cetera.

   The translation of Bhagvadgita in French, Dutch, English, and Sanskrit may help to learn Sanskrit. The original English translation is given by Ramanand Prasad of Gita Society. Also visit Gita in multi-language scripts page.

   There is one interesting comparison made between Sanskrit and Latvian at http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi51.htm along with other ancient languages such as Akkadian, Sumerian et cetera. A comment on Lithuanian and Sanskrit is available here. Also read 1, 2, 3.

   Only God knows how our humanity has moved and survived!

   There are two articles providing link of Finnish Romanian with Sanskrit at http://www.oph.fi/english/pageLast.asp?path=447;490;15850;15996;15999 and http://www.oph.fi/english/page.asp?path=447;490;15850;15856.

   The connection between Serbian and Sanskrit is presented by Zeta, and same with nice music with discussion, and Slavic Thracian Sanskrit : Languages similar.

   The Deutsche Welle presents an audio news program in Sanskrit which is updated every fortnight.

   Prof. Ferit Arav is translating some Sanskrit texts in Dutch. For example, Yoga Vasishtha Sara, Aravindopanishad, Advaita Bodha Dipika, Ramana maharshi vichAra sangraha, Shankaracharya's Tattvabodha (in preparation Sept. 2018) etc.

   For Russian-Sanskrit studies, please visit

   • Sanskrit bhaashhaa site developed by Konstantin Vohenets.
   • http://devii.narod.ru/sanskrit/ includes Devanagari alphabets and the texts of the "Sanskrit manual" by Vera Kochergina and "Sanskrit Grammar" by Zaliznyak using ITRANS encoding for Sanskrit words. It's easier to buy the manual of Kochergina in Moscow. Kochergina's Sanskrit-Russian dictionary has an addendum on the Grammar of Zaliznyak. These useful books may be pricy for a few.
   • The http://www.franklang.ru/sanskrit.html is very useful for Russian speakers learning Sanskrit. It opens up to various categories 1) DevavANI - Sanskrit Primer by Zufar Ahvadiyev and Rashida Zhangaliyeva in English and Russian (it requires special fonts), 2) Sanskrit Primer by Natalia Kochergina with 45 units in 9 zip files, 3) VedAyaNam - The Sanskrit Reader by Zufar Ahvadiyev, and 4) Sanskrit Texts with Translations by Natalia P. Likhushina. The files are available in djvu format. These publications were done with agreement of the authors.
   • The page http://www.multikulti.ru/Sanscrit/ is also interesting but it provides only links to other sites.
   • The site http://samskrtam.narod.ru/ By Artem Mischenko has fonts and texts of "Sanskrit manual" by Kochergina and "Sanskrit Grammar" by Zaliznyak. It includes pictures of ancient manuscripts.
   • http://gopal.ru/ is Madana Gopala Das's site. He has placed his Cyrillic-based transliteration fonts and a small program that helps to learn Sanskrit words. Also there are a few translations. He is the author of a book "Sanskrit for Vaishnav" (A manual for beginners.)
   • http://www.india.ru/ This is a very informative site of stuff about India, including some materials about Hindi and Sanskrit (only alphbet and few words) (Konstantin's http://biblio.india.ru/india/sanskrit/ is already mentioned above.) Also in this site there's a project of "An intensive course of Sanskrit for beginners". It is under construction. ( http://www.india.ru/sanskrit-study/)
   • The site http://indepigr.narod.ru/ of D. Lielukhine is dedicated to Indian Epigraphy. There are author's articles on Nepal, Kadamba, Vakataka, Ashokan etc. inscriptions. A lot of texts without pictures. A quite specific theme. In English and Russian. (English index: http://indepigr.narod.ru/index1.htm )
   • Vasyl Vernyhora has translated Sanskrit texts such as Tripura Rahasya, Avadhuta Gita, Yoga Rahasya, Yoga Shastra, Jivanmukta Gita, Dattatreya Upanishad & some other Datta related texts http://sss.vn.ua/.
   • 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). The group and sites are coordinated by Marcis Gasuns.
   • Asiatica/Indica http://www.philosophy.ru/library/asiatica/indica contains many books related to Sanskrit, Indology, religion et cetera. (According to Google's URL safety check, this site hosts malware, which is also possible due to the font structure. The contents are resourceful but as usual, just be careful to visit it unless precautions are taken.)
   • Borssoff's articles on Sanskrit, Russian, Lithuanian, and other languages at http://borissoff.wordpress.com.

   For Croatian, read an article Sanskrit in Croatia: From Sarasvati to Hrvati by James Cooper

   For Portugese, use http://www.geocities.com./baja/6463/inframe.html site built by Tarcisio da Frota. The Bhagvadgita translation is available in Portuguese at http://www.bhagavadgita.hpg.ig.com.br/index.htm . See the search engine for Bhagvadgita, and continue search for Sanskrit and yoga links. Rodrigo Gomes Ferreira, a student of Vedanta under the guidance of Gloria Arieira, who is Swami Dayananda Saraswati's disciple, has started a site www.vedanta.pro.br for Vedanta classes, where you can also find information related to learning Sanskrit through Portugese. Rodrigo is a member of Vedanta and Sanskrit school called Vidya Mandir in Rio de Janeiro. Marco Carvalho presents Yogashara Upanishad in Sanskrit with translation in English and Portugu�s.

   Flavia Bianchini and Roberto Martins maintain http://www.yogadevi.org/ that provides many translations of Indian traditional texts into Portuguese and Spanish (http://www.yogadevi.org/textos.html). They have also compiled various links related to Yoga, Ayurveda.

   Although not directly associated with Sanskrit studies, the Ensinamentos Sagrados da Vedanta, The holy teachings of vedanta site is presented by students of Vedanta and the teachings of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Many well formatted books in English, Spanish, and Portugese are available for download.

   http://aulasdesanscrito.com/ has articles with graphics. See Devanagari alphabets.

   A Norwegian translation of the Isha Upanishad is available at http://vindheim.net/poesi/isha.html.

   For Dutch, visit http://www.arsfloreat.nl/. It has downloadable files of Dutch translation of Srimad Bhagavatam, Maharamayana - Yoga Vasishtha, Isha Upanishad, and Kena Upanishad. A book on Vedanta by Swami Prabhavananda is among the Dutch translations of Bible and Koran.

   Watch video interview of Skarbimir Szczesny Rucinski, a Sanskrit Scholar from Poland where he speaks Sanskrit fluently. News item.

   Polish terms derived from Sanskrit

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   Q. Where can I find online studied articles regarding glory, usefulness and shortcomings of Sanskrit?

   The following articles are a very good reading regarding Sanskrit. These are linked mainly for information and do not indicate our recommendation of views. Some links also relate to organization involved in promotion of Sanskrit. We plan to add articles and songs written in Sanskrit. If you have such information please let us know.

   • Sanskrit : our crowning glory written by Dr. Karan Singh, Hindusthan Times, December 21, 1998.
   • gIrvANagirAgauravam गीर्वाणगिरागौरवम् Glory of Sanskrit
   • Why study Sanskrit? on acharya site
   • Why Learn Sanskrit for Ayurveda? and Subdoshas by Nicholai Bachman.
   • Music and Dance from Sanskrit by Dr. R. Thiagarajan. See also for previus parts.
   • What is Sanskrit? on Columbia University web page of Professor Gary A. Tubb.
   • Sanskrit - Language of the Gods.
   • Sanskrit, a divine Language Why? by M P Bhattathiry.
   • Sanskrit, a Sacred Model of Language, an article by Vyas Houston of American Sanskrit Institute.
   • The origin and evolution of Sanskrit, an article by V. Jayaraman.
   • The Wonder that is Sanskrit, a proposed book project at Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry.
   • Sanskrit & the Technological Age , an article by Vyas Houston of American Sanskrit Institute.
   • Unlocking the Splendors of Sanskrit , an interview of Vyas Houston of American Sanskrit Institute appeared in Hinduism Today, May 1993.
   • Speaking in Sanskrit, the story of Mathuru in Karnataka's Shimoga district.
   • Advice to Householders by Swami Shivananda of the The Devine Life Society.
   • Inaugural Address at the All India Sanskrit Shikshak Sammelan by Murali Manohar Joshi.
   • Sanskrit is a magical language; its study should be a joy article by Reeta Dutta Gupta, which appeared in The Times of India, February 21, 1997.
   • Interview of Deepak Chopra conducted by Rina Tripath, 26th March 2001 in ApunkaChoice.com.
   • Macaulay's men in the opposition, an article from Free Press Journal.
   • Corresponence by Shri Vasuvaj of Sanskrit Bharati, Bangalore and Shri Paul Sheppard, Principal of Abraham Lincoln Elementary, New York.
   • Short Biography of Panini.
   • Relations between Sanskrit, Pali, the Prakrits and the modern vernaculars, by R. G. Bhandarkar, 1883!
   • Why Study Sanskrit, an introduction to "Learn Sanskrit through self study : Interactive on-line lessons."
   • The west learns Greek, Latin, we should study Sanskrit, a message by Uppili Vasu.
   • Sanskrit in Schools, an article by J. S. Rajput of National Council of Educational Research and Training, NCERT, India. All the Sanskrit texts books from NCERT are available athttp://ncert.nic.in/ncerts/textbook/textbook.htm. See also complete Texts.
   • The report of the Sanskrit Commission, Government of India, 1956-1957.
   • How Sanskrit should be taught, article appeared in The Hindu, August 28, 2001.
   • News items from Samskrita Bharati in Sanskrit and English.
   • http://www-acc.scu.edu/~bmccorduck/sanskritpage.html, Sanskrit - India's First Language? And What Changed the Use of Sanskrit?
   • Krunvanto Vishwam Aryam: The Cultural Mission of NRIs by Peter Pratir.
   • Is Hinduism Really a Religion? by Kanika Goswami.
   • Why is Sanskrit so controversial? By Sanjoy Majumder. "Ninety-five per cent of Sanskrit literature has nothing to do with religion."
   • A well-written document is "The death of Sanskrit" by Sheldon Pollock, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 43(2), 392-426, which includes comments on current movements in India. Professor Pollack is involved with the team of scholars in the project "The Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems, on the eve of colonialism," investigating the structure and social context of Sanskrit "science and knowledge" during the years from 1550 to 1750.
   • For an objective understanding of the Sanskrit, as a tool and as a language-carrier of commentaries of universal truth, one must study what critics have to say about it. We need "eye-openers" to get better perspective. As works of scholars, it also shades a light on the question whether there is anything called "absolute" perfection.

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   Q. Can you please specify additional useful and interesting links ? The following links may be of general interest for your personal study and entertainment. No specific promotion is intended.
   • http://www.newsepapers.com/ : Online newspapers from different countries and languages (Indian) : Australia, Bangladesh, Bengali, Canada, China, English, France, Germany, Gujarati, hindi, Indian, Japan, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Myanmar, North, Korea, Pakistani, Punjabi, Russia, South, Korea, Sri, Lanka, Tamil, Telugu, Thailand, UK, Urdu, USA. The newspaper are embedded in frames without the associated advertisements.
   • Processing tools page has some software tools such as Mudgala Kosha, VLC Multi-Media player, ccleaner, snap2html, Folder Size, Duplicate file finder, YouTube video to audio converter et cetera, for general use.
   • samachar.com links various Indian newspapers and magazines with international and regional categories.

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   For additional links to articles and activities online, visit https://sanskritlinks.blogspot.com.

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   The files on Sanskrit Documents site are prepared by volunteers over many years and are meant to be used for personal study and research. They are not to be copied or reposted for promotion of any website or individuals or for commercial purpose without permission.

   Please help to maintain respect for the volunteer spirit.