Religion and Rajput Women "d0e35"

Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation

I have chosen a system of transliteration that avoids diacritics and provides approximate pronunciation for readers uninitiated into the Sanskritic diacritical system. I have added diacritics in the glossary, which contains both untranslatable and frequently used terms. Diacritics remain in quotations, in the titles of English and French writings, and in the titles of texts written in Devanagari script. For the sake of easier recognition I have used common English spellings for proper names. There is considerable variation in the English and Hindi spellings of some of these names, particularly geographical names. I have adopted regularly used English spellings appearing on government maps and signs. Some of these conventional spellings are not direct transliterations of the Devanagari.

Also for easier recognition I have used the standard Hindi spellings where possible rather than Rajasthani spellings. As the text reveals, the women I interviewed speak different dialects (some Rajasthani, others non-Rajasthani), which means considerable variation in pronunciation, spelling, and word endings. I treat this complicated linguistic situation by using standard Hindi equivalents (many women spoke in standard Hindi during the interviews) except where no Hindi equivalent exists (e.g., the Rajasthani word malipanau ) or where the Hindi equivalent is reasonably different from the Rajasthani (e.g., the Rajasthani shrap for the Hindi shap ).

Transliteration conventions that bear special mention include the

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dropping of unpronounced final a and the rendering of the Hindi

as ri . The Rajasthani retroflex

is rendered l , as it would appear in a Hindi equivalent (e.g., Rajasthani

is shown as the Hindi kul ). The retroflex

is written r (with no distinction made between this and the consonant r ) and the retroflex

is written rh . Nasals are represented as n and m , according to standard convention (see, for example, R. S. McGregor's Outline of Hindi Grammar ). The Hindi v is represented as v , except where conventional spellings of proper names employ a w . The Persian ph is rendered f and

as q . Finally, both

and

are rendered in English as sh .

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