Editing Devanagari transliteration (section)

===Treatment of inherent schwa ===
Devanāgarī consonants include an "inherent a" sound, called the [[schwa]], that must be explicitly represented with an "a" character in the transliteration. Many words and names transliterated from Devanāgarī end with "a", to indicate the pronunciation in the original [[Sanskrit]]. This [[Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages|schwa is obligatorily deleted]] in several modern [[Indo-Aryan languages]], like [[Hindi]], [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]], [[Marathi language|Marathi]] and others. This results in differing transliterations for Sanskrit and schwa-deleting languages that retain or eliminate the schwa as appropriate:
*Sanskrit: Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Śiva, Sāmaveda
*Hindi: Mahābhārat, Rāmāyaṇ, Śiv, Sāmved

Some words may keep the final a, generally because they would be difficult to say without it:
* Krishna, Vajra, Maurya

Because of this, some words ending in consonant clusters are altered in various modern Indic languages as such:
Mantra=mantar. Shabda=shabad. Sushumna=sushumana.