Hindi

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This page provides guidance on typesetting LaTeX documents in the Hindi language using the Devanagari script.

Here is a minimal document using lualatex, which is currently the recommended engine (although it also works in xelatex).

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[hindi, provide=*]{babel}
\babelfont{rm}{Shobhika}

\begin{document}

हिन्दी शब्द का सम्बन्ध संस्कृत शब्द ‘सिन्धु’ से माना जाता है।

\end{document}

(In versions <24.14 and lualatex you should activate explicitly the Harfbuzz renderer.)

You can watch the following video:

As a complement, see LaTeX – Indic languages (with lazy loading).

Counters

Although Hindi numerals are best entered directly in its original form, you may still need some conversion because LaTeX uses internally the Arabic ones. With luatex there are two ways to map Arabic to Hindi numerals, passed as option to \babelprovide:

• maparabic does it at the TeX level, by redefining \arabic. Note the form written to the auxiliary files is the converted one. It works with xetex, too.
• mapdigits does it at the engine level. This is usually the preferred method.

To perform this conversión, use the following preamble:

\usepackage[hindi, provide=*]{babel}
\babelprovide[mapdigits]{hindi}  % or alternatively maparabic
\babelfont{rm}{FreeSerif}

There is an additional counter:

• alphabetic क ख ग घ ङ च छ ज झ ञ ट ठ ड ढ ण त थ द ध न प फ ब भ म य र ल व श ष स ह

See the explanation in the babel manual about \localecounter and localenumeral.

Punctuation

Only luatex. The transform punctuation.space inserts a space before the following four characters: !?:;.

The transform danda.nobreak prevents a line break before a danda or double danda if there is a space.

In Unicode, danda and double danda are shared by several scripts, and babel doesn’t assign them by default to any of them. If you are using onchar to select the font automatically in the text you may want to assign them with:

\babelcharproperty{`।}{locale}{hindi}
\babelcharproperty{`॥}{locale}{hindi}

Transliterations

Only luatex. There are transforms for the Harvard-Kyoto system (transliteration.hk) and IAST (transliteration.iast)