Help

Input Methods:

Sanskrit Dictionary understands and transcodes देवनागर्-ई IAST, Harvard-Kyoto, SLP1, ITRANS. You can type in any of the Sanskrit transliteration systems you are familiar and select your preferred transliteration scheme from the selector box accordingly:

Using the Devanagari and IAST Keyboards

Click the  icon to enable a popup keyboard and you can toggle between देवनागरी and IAST characters. If you want a system software for typing easily in देवनागरी or IAST you can download our software called SanskritWriter (PC version only presently)

Wildcard Searches

To replace many characters use * example śakt* will give all words starting with śakt (and containing śakt). To replace an individual character use ? for example śakt?m will give all words that have something in place of the ?. By default our search system looks for words “containing” the search keyword.

Exact Search

To search for an exact term example yoga just enclose your search in “” in this case your search would be “yoga”. This is useful to look up roots for example “ram”. You can also end the word with “ as a shortcut for the exact search so if you want to look for rāma type rāma” in the search box.

Input Encoding

To the left of the search box is a drop down where you can select your preferred Sanskrit input encoding format denoted by the following iconThe default encoding is IAST but you can select as per your preference from Harvard-Kyoto, SLP1, ITRANS or देवनागरी Once you have selected once, the dictionary will remember your preference.

Input Language

You can search in many world languages e.g. French, German, Afrikaans, Ukrainian etc. in our dictionary, simply enter the word in your native language and then select from the language selector denoted by the  icon. This works for the main dictionary search as well as the Word Across Languages feature.

Search Across Languages

Word Across Languages allows you to take any English (or other language if you use the input language selector) word and then see the word in 63 (soon to be growing) world languages. It will show the single word translated in it’s most common form and then show on the right hand side any matching roots for this word and then all synonyms, you can also use this as a sanskrit synonym search.

Literary Source Search

If you wish to display all the words that are referenced in a particular literary source you can use the source: search option for example to display all the words that are referenced a Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta, simply type source:meghadūta or source:bhāvaprakāśa in the search box.

Output Display Modes

If you search in any roman script the output will display in IAST and if you search in देवनागरी the output will default to this script. We also have an experimental Brāhmī display feature under testing. Firefox is the recommended browser for Brāhmī output display.

Prefix and Suffix Search

Type vas> to show all words starting with vas and and <vas to show all words ending with vas.  This is a very useful tool for exploring how the roots have created vast lists of nouns. x