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NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
In the book Devanagari characters are transliterated
according to the scheme adopted by the International
Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912 and since then
generally acknowledged to be the only rational and satis-
factory one. In it the inconsistency, irregularity and
redundancy of English spelling are ruled out: f, q, w, x
and z are not called to use ; one fixed value is given to
each letter. Hence a, e, i and g always represent ef, q,
and n respectively and never 4, w, 44 and 7 or other
values which they have in English : t and d are always
used for 9 and only. One
tialde,
one accent, four
macrons and ten dots (2 above, 8 below) are used to
represent adequately and correctly all Sanskrit letters.
The letter e alone represents ‘. Since the natural function
of h will be to make the aghop gho§a (e.
g.,
kh, ch,
th, ph, gh, jh, tih, dh, bh), it would be an anomaly for a
scientific scheme to use it in combinations like ch and sh
for giving ‘ and q values ; hence ch here is c and s, h
z. The vowel vir, is represented by
r
because ri legiti-
mate for ft only, is out of place, and the singular ri is an
altogether objectionable distortion. The
tialde
over n
represents sr,
a.
Accent mark over s gives
wu
6; dots
above m and n give anusvara, () in and ‘,