Sanskrit

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This page offers basic guidance on typesetting a LaTeX document in the Sanskrit language using the Devanagari script.

For pdflatex, have also a look at the skt and devanagari packages.

Support with ini locale file

Here is a minimal sample file with sanskrit as the main language (assuming luatex, which is the recommended engine, and babel ≥24.14, although it may work with previous versions).

With TeXLive versions prior to 2026 you may need to add provide=* as a package option.

\documentclass[sanskrit]{article}

\usepackage{babel}

\babelfont{rm}{Shobhika}

\begin{document}

Digits $=$ \localenumeral{digits}{0123456789}

\end{document}

More fonts

Shobhika is bundled with TeXLive, but there are many other fonts, although not all of them properly support Sanskrit. The following example uses Sanskrit 2020. The example has been typeset with xelatex, but the result is the same with lualatex:

\documentclass[sanskrit]{article}

\usepackage{babel}

\babelfont{rm}{Sanskrit 2020}

\begin{document}
    
Digits $=$ \localenumeral{digits}{0123456789}
    
धर्मक्षेत्रे कुरुक्षेत्रे समवेता युयुत्सव:   ||
    
\end{document}

Alternatives are Siddhanta (also in TeXLive, but you may need to move the ttf file), Tiro Devanagari Sanskrit, Adishila or Chandas, among others.

Transliterations and other transforms

(lualatex) Babel provides transforms for the Harvard-Kyoto and IAST transliterations, named transliteration.hk and transliteration.iast. Here is an example with the latter:

\documentclass[sanskrit]{article}

\usepackage[provide={transforms=transliteration.iast}]{babel}

\babelfont{rm}{Siddhanta}
\begin{document}

dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ//
    
\end{document}

Very often danda and doble danda are entered as vertical bars (i.e., | and ||). You can define easily if necessary a couple of transforms to get the actual Devanagari characters (order is relevant!):

\babelprehyphenation{sanskrit}{ {007C}{007C} }{ string = ॥ }
\babelprehyphenation{sanskrit}{ {007C} }{ string = । }

(Since | has a special meaning in transforms, it’s entered by its Unicode value.)

Contribute

If you are a native speaker or have expertise in this language, you can contribute, make suggestion or request an enhancement by submitting a pull request, opening an issue, or contacting the Babel maintainer with the link above.