How to type Hindi words in LaTeX

You are probably not using the right Roman characters for the transliteration to work. As far as I have been able to figure out, in order to write "स्कूल" you would have to enter {dn-8{k}l} .

documentclass{article}
usepackage{devanagari}
begin{document}
{dn -8{k}l}
end{document}

outputs स्कूल. Make sure you get the capitalisation right.

This link might be of further help.

You might want to consider using unicode.

I use XeLaTeX with unicode source to produce multilingual documents with latex. It has the advantage of having the native characters in your source.

You'll need to change to using polyglossia, rather than babel, if you move in this direction.

documentclass{article}
usepackage{devanagari}
begin{document}
{dn skuula}
end{document}

compile it using "devnag" compiler Results in following:

{dn -8{k}l}

and then run the generated ".tex" file in latex you will get the output required.

output:

स्कूल

Improving on Manjunath's answer.

For example, I wanted to type disha.

1. Create a temporary document named temp.dn with the following contents

   documentclass{article}
   usepackage{devanagari}
   begin{document}
   {dn di"saa}
   end{document}
   

2. Depending on the word you want, try out some mapping from the document below. Save temp.dn https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2SIfLcmTaRuX3lfWm5RZ2QyUzA&usp=sharing

3. devnag temp.dn

4. Above command produces temp.tex
5. pdflatex temp.tex
6. Above command generates a pdf.
7. Check if the pdf has the hindi word that you wanted.
8. Once you arrive at the word that you wanted, look at temp.tex file
9. You will see {dn EdfA}
10. Copy this piece of code to your original tex file.