Gayatri Mantra Spelling in IAST with Pronunciation Tutorial Video
If you love mantras, you know that finding properly spelled Sanskrit Mantra is really challenging!
This post is part of a series on accurately spelled Sanskrit mantras in IAST. If you're looking for reliable information on how to spell the Savitri Gayatri Mantra you'll find it below:
- Gayatri mantra in Devanagari (or the Sāvitrī Gāyatrī mantra in Devanāgarī if we're being precise!)
- Sāvitrī Gāyatrī mantra in IAST transliteration
- The long form of the Sāvitrī Gāyatrī mantra with 7 bīja mantras (instead of the usual 3)
- An image of Sāvitrī Gāyatrī
- A quick video tutorial on a few of the key pronunciation mistakes that non-Indians make when chanting or singing the Gayatri mantra.
How to write Sanskrit Mantras correctly
First of all, why learning mantras from accurately transliterated Sanskrit is something that I also cover in great detail in my 32 page Free mantra yoga e-book. But in this series of blog posts, I want to actually offer correctly spelled Sanskrit Mantra in IAST.
I have a sneaky teaching trick that I play on my 200 Hour Sound Yoga and Mantra students. in order for them to graduate with the Sound & Mantra Yoga teaching certification, they have to do a Mantra research project. That mantra research project has a list of criteria that includes studying the sound anatomy of the mantra, which you cannot do if you don't have an accurately spelled mantra!
Here's how my teacher trainees have to study the sound anatomy of their favorite Sanskrit mantra:
- Find the mantra in Devanāgarī (a photograph of the mantra from a proper resource text is acceptable)
- Find the mantra properly transliterated in IAST
- Find a recording of the mantra properly pronounced, and compare to one that’s not properly pronounced, if applicable
They get to the mantra research project in the course, and pick their mantra that they want to dive into deeply, and then they find out just how difficult it is to get accurate information. Most of the blog posts and Mantra research information available on the Internet is unreliable at best, just plain inaccurate at worst!
My teacher training students struggle with this, until they come onto an office hours and talk to me about it face-to-face. Then I told them that the learning objective of that enrichmant activity is to develop discernment about the quality of the resources that they are taking inspiration from.
Unacceptable resources for studying Sanskrit mantra:
I tell my students that while you may find these resources inspirational (and they can be useful as springboards for further research), they are not credible scholarly sources:
- Wikipedia articles on mantra
- second hand verbal info i.e. “a yoga teacher told me once” or “I heard it in a kīrtan”
- translations on random yoga-related websites that do not have transliteration
If a mantra book, teacher training manual, mantra website, or mantra blog post does not bother to spell the mantra correctly, that’s a signal that the rest of the information is likely not very well considered either.
How to easily tell if a mantra is spelled properly:
- If it has dots and lines and dashes, that’s an indicator that it might be written by someone who knows how to spell.
- If there are no transliteration marks for the Sanskrit into the Roman alphabet, that’s a pretty clear dog whistle that the resource is uninformed.
- The best resources will have the original Devanagari script, along with a proper transliteration.
- The very best professional mantra resources will also have a direct word by word translation, with at least one or several poetic interpretations. (Usually reserved for teacher training students.)
- The absolute nerdiest best mantra resources will go into the relevant Sanskrit word roots as well! (Usually reserved for Sanskrit grammar program students.)
Savitri Gayatri Mantra accurately spelled in Devanagari and IAST
(IAST is the preferred international standard for Sanskrit transliteration. Dēvanāgarī is the Sanskrit script. This is a screenshot from our 200HR sound & mantra teacher training course.)
The Gāyatrī Mantra properly spelled in IAST:
Auṁ Bhūr Bhuvaḥ Svāhā
Tat Savitur Vareṇyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhīmahi
Dhiyo Yo Naḥ Pracodayāt
Note that this is the more common short form of the mantra with only 3 additional bīja seed sound mantras (instead of the 7 in the long form of the Sāvitrī Gāyatrī mantra above)
Commonly, you will hear a lot of close - but not quite accurate - pronunciation with this mantra. In the video below, I go over some of the most common mispronunciations that rob mantra lovers of the full power and subtle beauty of the Mantra.
Quick Gayatri Mantra pronunciation tutorial video:
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Free Sound & Mantra Training Resources:
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Learn more about sound healing yoga, mantra meditation, and nada yoga here:
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