A Note on Transliteration
I have transliterated Hindi and Sanskrit terms into English to match their
original pronunciation as closely as possible. In most cases, the translitera-
tion is a straightforward substitution of Hindi or Sanskrit letters with their
counterparts in English. However, discrepancies in the languages create
some difficulties in transliteration.
In this book, Hindi and Sanskrit words are made plural by adding the
English sto the end. This is done to conform the transliterated words to
English grammar, even though this is not standard in Hindi or Sanskrit.
For some terms there exist both Sanskritic and Hindi forms, each with dif-
ferent pronunciations. I have transliterated these words from Hindi or
Sanskrit depending on the most appropriate context; Sanskritic forms seem
fitting when one is discussing Sanskrit texts, but not when reporting a remark
by a Hindi speaker.
Transliteration also becomes complicated for words where there is a Hindi
or Sanskrit letter that does not directly correspond to a letter in English. For
example, single characters in the Hindi alphabet represent sounds that
require consonant combinations in English, such as “ch” and “sh.” I have used
these letter combinations to substitute for the Hindi letters whenever possi-
ble. In other cases, transliterating Hindi and Sanskrit pronunciation is not as
straightforward. The following list contains Hindi and Sanskrit terms from
this book that do not follow standard English pronunciation. They are written
here with diacritical marks to indicate the proper pronunciation.