Utility: Sanskrit Diacritic Font Text Conversion

If clicking Sample 1 results in miscellaneous graphics characters being displayed or large spaces between the words, this indicates that the selected font is not installed on your computer.

Clicking Compress Unicode Diacritics causes the Unicode Sanskrit diacritic characters to be converted to maximum compactness and for maximum compatibility with newer operating systems / web browsers. All of the Sanskrit diacritic characters on this website are the “compressed” versions. Only Sample 3 contains uncompressed Sanskrit diacritic characters.

If the HTML file is going to be saved in UTF-8 format, then there is no need to use any of the HTML buttons.

By the way, all of the web pages on this website are in the UTF-8 format.

BREAKTHROUGH! Sanskrit diacritics with no special font required! The http://pratyatosa.com/?P=4p web page, as does this one, uses the Segoe UI font with the Tahoma Plus and Tahoma fonts as backups just in case you don't have Segoe UI installed.

The Segoe UI font is the first “off-the-shelf” font that I’ve seen that displays all 31 of the standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters correctly, but with web browsers other than Internet Explorer and Firefox 3, it only displays 30 out of 31 correctly. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 or have Microsoft Word 2007 installed, then you already have Segoe UI installed.

The newer versions (dated 7/17/2004 or later) of the Tahoma and Microsoft Sans Serif fonts display 30 out of the 31 standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters correctly on most Windows XP / Vista computers. (Try clicking Sample 1 above with Segoe UI, Tahoma, or Microsoft Sans Serif selected.) Using Windows 7, these same 3 fonts each display all 31 characters correctly. In fact, Windows 7 adds 6 other fonts which also display all 31 characters correctly: Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Segoe UI Light, Segoe UI Semibold and Times New Roman. (See below)

Balaram is a Sanskrit diacritic font, but it’s not a Unicode font. Balaram is one of a family of Sanskrit diacritic fonts developed by ISKCON in the ’90s. ISKCON fonts such as Balaram, ScaGoudy, etc. include all 31 of the standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters, but none of these characters are mapped according to the Unicode standard.

Click here to download all 51 of the fonts listed below (except Arial Unicode MS) in one fell swoop. (18.7MB)

• After downloading one or more of the fonts, unzip them and install them by following the instructions in the included “_Readme.txt” files.

• The above listed fonts are each capable of displaying all 31 of the standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic transliteration characters correctly except for Arial Unicode MS, Garava, Garava Heavy, and Garava Small Caps, which display 30 out of 31 correctly. The one character that these 4 fonts display incorrectly is “LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CHANDRABINDU” (), which is the least important of the 31 because it only appears approximately 4 times in all of Srila Prabhupada's books.

• The fonts with names that end in “Plus” were enhanced through the agency of modifications to one or more of the Sanskrit diacritic characters and/or the addition of one or more missing Sanskrit diacritic characters. To accomplish this, I used a program called “Font Creator Pro 5.0”, which worked very well once I got the hang of it.

Click here to download all 51 of the fonts listed above (except Arial Unicode MS) in one fell swoop. (18.7MB)

15 free Sanskrit diacritic Unicode fonts, namely Akkhara, Cankama, Carita, Guru, Hattha, Kabala, Lekhana, Mandala, Odana, Pali, Talapanna, Talapatta, Veluvana, Verajja, and Verajja Serif, each of which display 30 out of 31 of the ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters correctly: http://www.aimwell.org/Fonts/fonts.html

Click here to download all 15 of the fonts listed above in one fell swoop. (8.17MB)

Click here to download all 15 of the fonts listed above in one fell swoop. (11.6MB)

Click here to download 19 free Sanskrit diacritic / Devanagari fonts, namely Anadi (Unicode), Avatar-Black, Bhaskar, Bhimasena, Devanagari, Drona, Garuda, Gaudiya, GaudiyaDisplay, GaudiyaDisplayXB, Gauranga, Hladini, Karuna, Kunti, Kurma, Shanti, Tamal, Uttama, Yama. (1.39MB)

All 19 of these fonts were created by my oldest son, Michael Best (Murari Dasa). He created the 18 non-Unicode fonts in the early 90s. They are, as far as I know, the world's first Sanskrit diacritic fonts designed for Microsoft Windows!

Click here to download 21 free Sanskrit diacritic / Devanagari fonts, namely Balaram, BellCentenial, Inbenb, Inbeni, Inbeno, Inbenr, Indevr, RM Devanagari, Sanskrit Helvetica, Sanskrit New Caladonia, Sanskrit Times, ScaBenguit, ScaCheltenham, ScaFrizQuadrata, ScaGoudy, ScaHelvetica, ScaKorinna, ScaOptima, ScaPalatino, ScaSabon, and ScaTimes. (1.33MB) These fonts are from VedaBase 2003. They are based upon the Sanskrit diacritic character mapping standards established by Michael Best.

Installing VedaBase 2003 under Windows Vista or Windows 7, even when using Windows XP compatibility mode, may result in a failure to install the fonts. This problem can be solved by downloading them using the link above and then installing them manually.