Long ago, I used to follow my former mentor Wendy Doniger on this. To paraphrase her position, Indologists will know what the Sanskrit words really are, and non-specialists will not care. But, I no longer agree with this. For one thing, with the advent of on-line dictionaries, even non-scholars (or non
-
Indological scholars) have the opportunity to look up terms (and without the diacriticals those without Sanskrit, or those who have lost their Sanskrit) are
lost.
For another, the ease with which diacriticals can be added
using modern technology
makes it inexcusable to leave them out. (In the the 80s, using one of the first personal word processing systems, I still had to add them in by hand
for my dissertation
.)
Last but not least Sanskrit words are not
"
Sanskrit
"
at all without the diacriticals. E.g., the letters "ṭ" and "t" are really not the same
and
mashing them up into
a single "t"
is nothing more than a misrepresentation, and
not using diacriticals turns the 48 sounds/letters of Sanskrit into something they are not.
So, yes. It is distracting
not to have them
, a
n
d
I think a lot
more. I would demand the
employment of
diacriticals of any scholar who uses Sanskrit.