Online sanskrit dictionary

This is a useful link for anyone pursuing the exact meaning of a Sanskrit word. However, there are one or two problems.

First of all, you need to understand the system the Cologne Online Dictionary and the Monier Williams people use to get round the fact that the English alphabet has 26 letters, whereas the Sanskrit alphabet has around 50 (depending on which ones you ignore!) They use a system of capital letters to represent long vowels, for example, and different letters of the English alphabet for different "n" sounds and the three different "s"es. It's called the Harvard-Kyoto System, and the Sanskrit alphabet using this system is as follows:

a A i I u U R RR lR lRR e ai o au M H
k kh g gh G c ch j jh J
T Th D Dh N t th d dh n
p ph b bh m y r l v z S s h

Confusing, no? However help is at hand --I hope. Now that I've sussed out how to find the different characters in a standard character set, you might find the following little table handy for the Sanskrit letters in your book that have the dots and lines attached:

Sanskrit becomes Harvard-Kyoto
ā becomes A
ī becomes I
ū becomes U
ṛ becomes R
ṝ becomes RR
ḷ becomes lR
ḹ becomes lRR
ṁ or ṃ becomes M
ḥ becomes H
ṅ becomes G
ñ becomes J
ṭ becomes T
ṭh becomes Th
ḍ becomes D
ḍh becomes Dh
ṇ becomes N
ṥ becomes z
ṣ becomes S

Hope this helps.

Another problem is that Sanskrit is an inflected language -- i.e. the endings of words change depending on whether they're singular or plural, or on what job they are doing in the sentence. You can get round this by just typing in part of the word (cut a few letters off the end) select "substring" from the options beside the search box, and see what you get.

Finally there's the charming habit Sanskrit has of running the words together. The only way to tackle this, if your Sanskrit is a bit weak or rusty, is to type in a selection of letters and see what you get.

Sorry this is a bit trial and error, but the only other option is to learn Sanskrit. And I will put a review of the best learner's book in the book review section right away!

Margo