In
Sanskrit there is a phenomenon called
visarga (written as :).
It is an echo after a vowel.
For instance a: is pronounced aha, and i: ihi. The stress on the ha
part depends on the metrum of the verse, sometimes it is hardly
noticed,
and sometimes it is like a full syllable. In the texts (especially the
Guru Gita)
I have chosen to maintain the visarga : instead of writing aha (or
oho).
Another phenomenon is
sandhi. This entails that that sometimes
the first or last letter of a word changes depending on the adjacent
word. Most often when a word ends with a vowel and the next word
begins with a vowel these vowels are joined, and the two words are
pronounced as one. In the texts I write the words apart, but to
indicate the joint I put instead of a white space a low hyphen between
the words:
yantra_
aadi
is then pronounced as yantraadi.
Sometimes a starting vowel gets lost this way: that vowel is then
written in parentheses. For instance
loko_
(u)pakaaraka:
is pronounced as lokopakaarakaha.