The five rows of stops स्पर्श sparśa

The twenty-five stops in the grid the grammarians laid out: one row for each place in the mouth, from the throat to the lips, and across each row voiceless, aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated and nasal. IAST spells the grid letter for letter, so the order you know from the romanization is the order of the script. Every consonant letter carries a short a with it: क ka, not k. The h of kh, gh, th and the rest is part of one letter: ख kha.