International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration

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International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
IAST
Script type romanisation
Time period
19th century–present
LanguagesSanskrit and other Indic Languages
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the 19th century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan, William Jones, Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress, in September 1894.[1][2] IAST makes it possible for the reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars.

  1. ^ Monier-Williams, Monier (1899). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (PDF). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. xxx.
  2. ^ "Tenth International Congress of Orientalists, Held at Geneva". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 879–892. 1895. JSTOR 25207765.