Displays

Each dictionary has a suite of four displays:

For all the dictionaries, the displays present options for the spelling of Sanskrit words, using various transliterations. There are also options for the representation of Sanskrit words which are in Devanagari in the text.

Each display contains a link to report errors which are noticed.

The display for the definition of a given headword also links to a scanned image of the dictionary page where the headword appears.

General distinctions among the displays

With the Basic Display, the user looks for one word per search, and only information about that one word is displayed. The Mobile Friendly Display is quite similar, but has a more compact display form that may be better for smaller computer display screens, such as those on mobile phones and tablets.

With the List Display, the user still looks for one word per search, and only definitional information about that one word is displayed. However, in addition, the list of headwords that appear in the dictionary before and after the given search word is also displayed in a sidebar.

With the Advanced Search, the user can search for groups of words that match some search criteria. Also, the search may be made relative to either the headwords of the dictionary or to full text of the dictionary.

Input Options: Transliteration

All of the displays are based on a digitized form of the dictionary in which Sanskrit headwords are represented in the SLP1 transliteration. However, users may choose another transliteration. Currently, Kyoto-Harvard and ITRANS are supported alternate transliterations of Sanskrit.

The List Display supports both transliteration input options, and also other input options, such as Devanagari.

Output Options

In many of the dictionaries, Sanskrit is represented in Devanagari. Headwords as well as Devanagari text can be rendered in the displays in Devanagari or Roman Unicode (IAST), as well in one of the phonetic transliterations mentioned above.

Spelling Differences among dictionaries

There are differences among texts regarding the spelling of headwords as well as other Sanskrit text appearing in the definitions. When looking up a word in a particular dictionary, the spelling conventions of that dictionary should be followed. As of this writing, the web-site has no ability to aid the user in adapting spellings to the conventions of the different dictionaries. This is a subject of active research interest.

Scanned Images

When looking up a word using one of the displays, a user may wish to refer to the dictionary underlying the digitized display. For instance, the user may suspect that some part of the digitized definition is wrongly spelled or incorrect in some other way. Thus, as part of the meta-data accompanying each definitional display there is a link to the scanned image of the corresponding page of the dictionary.

Scanned images are also available for download in the form of a bookmarked pdf.