[This transliteration of the fables of the first two books
of the Tantr-akhy-ayika was made by Lars Martin Fosse,
Research Fellow at the Department for East European and
Oriental Studies at the University of Oslo. The
transliteration was made in 1993, based on:

          Tantr-akhy-ayika.
          Die „lteste Fassung des Pa?ncatantra.
          Nach den Handschriften beider Rezensionen
          zum ersten Male herausgegeben 
          von
          Johannes Hertel.
          Berlin 1910.
          Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.
          Abhandlungen der k”niglichen Gesellschaft der
          Wissenschaften zu G”ttingen. 
          Philologisch-Historische Klasse.
          Neue Folge Band XII. Nro. 2.

Below is a description of the method of transliteration,
originally written by Peter Schreiner, Indologische
Abteilung,  Universit„t Zrich, R„mistr. 68, CH--8001
Zrich, Switzerland. Where necessary, the description has
been changed by me.]

1.1. Transliteration

1.1.1. Diacritical marks: Punctuation marks are used to code
diacritics. All diacritics are typed in  front of the letter
to which they belong (which imitates the traditional 
"layout" of typewriters where accents etc. are placed on
dead keys and need to be typed before the character is
typed). . = subscript dot (e..g. k.rta.h) ; = superscript
dot (e..g. a;nga) ? = tilda (superscript) (e..g. praj?n-a) -
= superscript hyphen (macron) (e..g. -atm-a) / = aigu
(superscript) (e..g. /s-astra)

Where, as in this introductory document, the use of
punctuation marks in their proper function has to  alternate
with their function as diacritical marks, their use as
punctuation marks is distinguished by a following blank (or
other signs of punctuation  including parentheses, also by a
following cipher, i..e. numeral) or by  doubling where a
blank is not possible (e..g. in abbreviations). Thus, the
dots in ".r.s.i" are diacritics, but the dot after ".r.si. "
is a full stop.  Similarly, since no blank can be inserted
after a hyphen, the actual hyphen is written by doubling it
("--"). 

1.1.2. Da.n.da:  | [!]

The vertical bar is used to represent the da.n.da (which
serves  as punctuation mark in Sanskrit texts);
the exclamation mark ! is used to represent the "half-
da.n.da" used by Hertel in his edition.

The da.n.da (vertical bar) is also used to delimit the
verse references; a double da.n.da is written at the 
beginning and end of the vers numbers.

1.1.3. Other markers:

The main part of the text being in prose, the beginning and
end of verses are  marked:  [ "Vers--Anfang" (beginning of
verse) ] "Vers--Ende" (end of verse)

"Underline" followed by blank indicates "vir-ama", i..e. the
slanting underbar which indicates an absolute end to a word
irrespective of sandhi.

1.1.4. References:

Fables are referred to by book no. and fable no. E.g. 1,16:
Fable no. 16 in Hertels edition, book no. 1.

1.2. Sandhi

The "principle of transliteration" has been that the input
format should reproduce the letters of the printed text as
closely as possible, i..e. that one types what one sees.
However, to what is printed (in Devan-agar-i) markers are
added (in the transliteration) to mark sandhi changes. 

A sandhi change is defined with regard to the "pausa form"
of a word, i..e. the form a word would take at the end of a
line or out of context (vigraha). Note that this pausa form
need not be identical with the stem which would be entered
in a dictionary. 

Thus, consonants which have undergone a sandhi change in the
text are marked by * (this sign is inserted during the
processing of the input; * is what had been typed).
Similarly, final vowels which have changed due to sandhi are
marked by * (e..g. -as-id* r-aj-a nalo* n-ama).

In case of vowel sandhi the above--mentioned principle of
transliteration suffers an exception: Vowel sandhi is
dissolved and marked (e..g. na*asti, ca*eva). Similarly,
avagraha is reconstituted, the originally omitted initial
"a" being marked as sandhi vowel (e..g. devo* *api).

In some special cases the marking of sandhi has to be
extended to include some disambiguating information:

-- to half--vowels which substitute for a long vowel the
diacritic for "long vowel" (-) is added (e..g. devy-* api);

-- if final --a in sandhi does not stand for --a.h (with
visarga), then the original vowel which has been substituted
by the --a is added (e..g. lokae* eva, where "loka eva" is
printed, which is the sandhi form for "loke eva").

Blank is inserted between words wherever this is possible in
transliteration (but not necessarily in Devan-agar-i), e..g.
"hy* api, nalo* *api.

1.3. Separation of compounds

Separation of compounds is marked by inserting + between the
members of the compound (e..g. nagara+sam-ipe). In the case
of sandhi, the + functions also as sa.mdhi--marker, i..e. no
additional sandhi--marker is added (e..g. tapo+vane,
mah-a+-atmana.h). 

Separation of compounds is restricted to nominal compounds.
Personal names have not been separated, nor have compounds
that express certain concepts, like r-ajakula. Separation
does not include grammatical analysis.  

1.4. Variant readings

Variant readings have not been recorded in this
transliteration version.  

2. Processing

Several programs have been utilized in the encoding of the
text. These include Word for the Macintosh, WordPerfect (PC-
version) as well as TUSTEP, the Tuebingen System of
Text--Processing Programs ("Tbinger System von
Textverarbeitungs--Programmen"). By the means of TUSTEP and
the appropriate filters (TUSTEP programs written for this
purpose), you can get a printout with proper romanized
Sanskrit characters. The text can easily be converted to
other formats.

Error discoveries and comments can be addressed to:
Lars Martin Fosse,
Department of East European and Oriental Studies
University of Oslo
POB 1030, Blindern
0315 Oslo
Tel: +47 22 85 68 48
Fax: +47 22 85 41 40
Email: fosse@hedda.uio.no