Namaste everyone!

Today, I was at temple for the Suṃdarakāṇḍa Pārāyaṇa and used the time to read and compare saṃskṛtaṃ with IAST romanization of the scripture. What caught my attention was the usage of both anusvāra with only a dot above letters and candrabindu with the half-moon under a dot.

As a matter of fact, the book passed out to anyone needed to follow along looked familiar as it is "Śri Rāmacaritamānasa (The Mānasa lake containing the exploits of Śri Rāma), Descent Five, Sundara-Kāṇḍa," which I have a copy of from the Gītā Press. Looking at the front of the book more closely, I see that it has Hindi text included.

Here are examples in the images.

I give up. It's not possible to upload image files here. You'll just have to figure out what I mean, since I cannot even copy and paste from that book, either.

Some words have the anusvāra (dot only above the clothes line) at the beginning of the word, in the middle, and sometimes at the end. Most of the time, the candrabindu shows up at the end of the word, unless there is a matra above the clothesline which doesn't give enough space for the candrabindu. I have seen the candrabindu show up in the middle of the word as well.

If you read the book here - http://www.gitapress.org/BOOKS/Engli...tmanas_Web.pdf - you'll see what I mean. Why do they use both the anusvara and the candrabindu?

Praṇāma