Frequently Asked Questions

बाणविदः bāṇavidaḥ and bARavidah are the same Sanskrit word written with three different scripts.  बाणविदः is written in the Devanagari script.  bāṇavidaḥ is written in the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) script.  And bARavidaH is written is the Sanskrit Library Protocol (SPL1).  In English, it means 'knowers of arrows'.

bARavidaH is written is the Sanskrit Library Protocol (SPL1), which uses ASCII as its base.   ASCII codes represent text in computers and URLs are required to be in ASCII, or the URL is to be converted into a valid ASCII format, which gets confusing.

The A is pronounced like the long 'a' in father.  The R is pronounced like the 'n' in gentle, which is the closest English counterpart.  The H is simultaneously voiced and unvoiced, which some schools teach their students to pronounced H like 'ha'.  The rest of the letters are pronounced similar to the English counterparts. There are four syllables bA+Ra+vi+daH.