Devanagari font feedback

I’m looking for some feedback on font selection for the default OpenStreetMap.org layer. One of my projects is to improve the font support of local scripts, and I’m currently looking at South Asia. Unfortunately, I can’t read the languages I’m working with.

I’ve put together a list of available openly-licensed Devanagari fonts at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/414#issuecomment-37682621 and I’d like feedback on what fonts work well.
My goals are to find a font that is

  • Readable, particularly at small sizes
  • Consistent in style with DejaVu Sans
  • Consistent with cartographic conventions in that language
  • is available in normal, bold and oblique (italic) versions

I am leaning towards Chandas as it is similar in style, particularly in the loops.

Feedback either here or on Github works. I will later be working on other scripts in the region.

Chandas is similar to fonts you would find in very old books.
Gargi and Mangal are good, but they lack some ligatures, rendering an unnecessary Halant. As ‘gi’ in ‘gita’ isn’t ligatured with ending ‘d’ in ‘shrimadbhagvad’, but ‘dbha’ is ligatured properly.
Samyak Devanagari looks very informal, also lacks some ligatures.
I like Kalimati, Nakula, Sahadeva, in that order.