Fri, 15 Sep 2006
Sanskrit Diacritics
Buuddhist texts are filled with Sanskrit terms. This is natural enough, as Budhism came from India and its texts were written in Sanskrits or related languages. Putting Sanskrit terms on the web can be a challenge, because diacritical marks are required to make distinctions between some of the letters. For example, the Buddhist word for wisdom is usually written without diacrits as prajna, but it really ought to be written as prajñā. You can write letters with diacrits using the entity code for the Unicode code point. These can be hard to come by, but this Irish bulletin board post has already done all the hard work for you. I've reformatted the information in the table below.
| HTML | Diacrit | Name |
|---|---|---|
| Ā | Ā | A macron |
| ā | ā | a macron |
| Ḍ | Ḍ | D dotbelow |
| ḍ | ḍ | d dotbelow |
| Ē | Ē | E macron |
| ē | ē | e macron |
| Ḥ | Ḥ | H dotbelow (visarga) |
| ḥ | ḥ | h dotbelow (visarga) |
| Ī | Ī | I macron |
| ī | ī | i macron |
| Ḷ | Ḷ | L dotbelow |
| ḷ | ḷ | l dotbelow |
| Ḹ | Ḹ | L dotbelow macron |
| ḹ | ḹ | l dotbelow macron |
| Ṃ | Ṃ | M dotbelow (anusvāra) |
| ṃ | ṃ | m dotbelow (anusvāra) |
| Ṅ | Ṅ | N dotabove |
| ṅ | ṅ | n dotabove |
| Ñ | Ñ | N tilde (Latin 1 „ works too) |
| ñ | ñ | n tilde (Latin 1 – works too) |
| Ṇ | Ṇ | N dotbelow |
| ṇ | ṇ | n dotbelow |
| Ō | Ō | O macron |
| ō | ō | o macron |
| Ṛ | Ṛ | R dotbelow |
| ṛ | ṛ | r dotbelow |
| Ṝ | Ṝ | R dotbelow macron |
| ṝ | ṝ | r dotbelow macron |
| Ś | Ś | S acute |
| ś | ś | s acute |
| Ṣ | Ṣ | S dotbelow |
| ṣ | ṣ | s dotbelow |
| Ṭ | Ṭ | T dotbelow |
| ṭ | ṭ | t dotbelow |
| Ū | Ū | U macron |
| ū | ū | u macron |
