Dictionaries Overview

CDSL hosts 43 dictionaries (published 1832–1993), grouped on the front page by language pair. This section explains the grouping, helps you pick the right dictionary, and links to the full catalog and citation conventions.

Groups

Group	Direction	Count	Examples
Sanskrit–English	SA → EN	14	Monier-Williams (MW), Apte (AP90/AP), Wilson (WIL), Cappeller (CAE)
English–Sanskrit	EN → SA	3	Monier-Williams (MWE), Borooah (BOR), Apte (AE)
Sanskrit–French	SA → FR	2	Burnouf (BUR), Stchoupak (STC)
Sanskrit–German	SA → DE	5	Böhtlingk-Roth (PWG), Böhtlingk shorter (PW), Grassmann (GRA)
Sanskrit–Latin	SA → LA	1	Bopp (BOP)
Sanskrit–Sanskrit	SA → SA	6	Śabdakalpadruma (SKD), Vācaspatyam (VCP), Abhidhāna texts
Specialized	indices/glossaries	12	Mahābhārata (INM/MCI), Vedic (VEI), Purāṇic (PUI/PE), Buddhist (BHS)

note

Counts are verified against the front page. The front page headlines 42 fully digitized dictionaries; the table has 43 rows because PD appears as a sample only. See the catalog Count note for the full resolution.

Choosing a dictionary

• General Sanskrit→English — start with Monier-Williams (MW/MWS); use Apte (AP90) for classical usage and compounds.
• Etymology / Vedic — Grassmann (GRA, Ṛg-Veda) and the large Böhtlingk-Roth (PWG); the shorter Böhtlingk (PW) is the compact German alternative.
• English→Sanskrit (composition) — Monier-Williams E→S (MWE).
• Sanskrit-internal definitions — the Sanskrit→Sanskrit lexica Śabdakalpadruma (SKD) and Vācaspatyam (VCP).
• Domain terms — the specialized indices (epics, Vedas, Purāṇas, Buddhist texts).

See the full catalog for every code, full name, language, date, and repo — or explore the same corpus visually: the dictionary landscape (which dictionaries cover ground no other has) and citation sources (which classical texts each one quotes). Two further data layers put the dictionaries in context: corpus attestation (how often each word is actually used) and machine morphology (how segmenters and generators read Sanskrit).

Where each dictionary lives

Each dictionary is its own repository in the sanskrit-lexicon GitHub org, named by its code (e.g. MWS, AP90, PWG). See Repositories for the org map.