Note on Transliteration

This book contains words from Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, and other Indic languages. In general, foreign terms are transliterated following the scholarly conventions in practice for those languages. The differences between the Hindi and Sanskrit romanization systems are few. In most Hindi words, the final "a" is dropped, e.g., sutradhara (Skt.), sutradhar (Hin.). To facilitate pronunciation, I have rendered the five sounds

, , , , and as ch, chh, sh, sh, and ri for Hindi, while preserving the standard c, ch, s, s, and r for Sanskrit. In the case of dramaturgical terms common to Hindi and Sanskrit, context determines the chosen spelling. The invocation of a Sanskrit drama is mangalacarana , of a Hindi drama mangalacharan . Urdu words are romanized following their most frequent spellings in Devanagari script. The izafat construction is represented by -e- , e.g., badr-e-munir, bahr-e-tavil .

Variant spellings are often found in the Hindi texts of this period. I have reproduced the inconsistencies of my sources, transliterating titles as printed. However, when referring to a class of stories, I have adopted the most common spelling, e.g., Ramlal's Puranmal , but in most versions spelled Puranmal . Anglicized spellings indicate words that have become common in English, e.g., Koran, guru, Shudras, Awadh. Personal names appear without diacritics, with the exception of authors' names transliterated in the appendixes. The popular surname simh is spelled as Singh except in textual references, e.g., Amar Singh Rathor (hero's name), Amar simh rathor (title of drama). Following Hindi usage, I have chosen to speak of Ram instead of Rama but have used Ramayana and Mahabharata even when referring to Hindi versions of the epics.

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