This Online Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide is a resource for Yoga teachers and students interested in learning how to better pronounce and understand the Sanskrit words that we use and encounter in our classes, conversations, texts, and teachings. Here you will find these Sanskrit words in the original Devanagari script, the corresponding transliteration, English translations of the terms and their roots, and streamable audio files of these words being pronounced.

Each Sanskrit word on this site has been looked up individually in order to provide the most accurate pronunciation, transliteration, and definition. I have used the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit) transliteration schema, the academic standard which, containing the essential diacritical marks, renders a lossless transliteration of all the Devanagari phonemes. Because the fonts used for the Devanagari and Romanized transliterations (Sanskrit 99 and URW Palladio IT, respectively) are not standard on today's operating systems and internet browsers, it was necessary to save all text as image files; the result will be slower page loads for those with slower connection speeds. This site requires the Flash MX plugin to stream audio.

The Sanskrit tools and resources I have used are ITRANS 99, V.S. Apte's The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, and Capeller's Sanskrit-English Dictionary. The definitions of terms, on a whole, lean towards being literal so as to avoid the otherwise necessity of explaining multiple meanings and usages within the various yoga schools and their respective philosophical frameworks. The primary resources, and in some instances sources, for the translation of the Sanskrit prayers, mantras, and selected verses, are those by Vyaas Houston and Sri Swami Satchidananda.

The focus of this site is limited in scope. Its purpose is not to provide detailed instruction or descriptions of the practices found within. I refer those interested to these excellent resources: the Bihar School of Yoga's Asana, Pranayama, Mudra, Bandha, B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga, and Georg Feuerstein's The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga.

The streamable audio files were recorded at Monkeyclaus Studio, a Hanuman studio and social movement dedicated to raising awareness through new media and creative partnerships. Thank you, Monkeys!

If you value this free resource and would like to support this project, please consider making a donation to help cover the cost of bandwidth.

Send questions and comments to tilak@