An etymology

[Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD]

VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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          John Peterson, University of Munich, Germany
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At 07:12 17/04/01 -0700, you wrote:
>VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
>Editors:  Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
>           John Peterson, University of Munich, Germany
>..................
>Members,

Dear co-members,

I have just now sent a medium-size message
with the following Subject line
//"Pupil of my eye" in kuRaL 1123 (two questions)//
to a new List (Classical Tamil)
which I opened yesterday at the following URL
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CTamil>,
and which should be dedicated to in-depth
discussions of topics interesting those familiar
with Classical Tamil.

I discuss the use of the classical Tamil terms pAvai (doll, effigy, etc.)
and karumaNi (apple of the eye) in kuRaL 1123

In that message, I quote 2 of the participants to this VYAKARAN thread.

The CTAMIL list has an open membership.

My idea is that before discussing topics in a very wide forum
(like INDOLOGY or VYAKARAN), it is better to bring them
to a (hopefully) ripe stage in a more specialized forum.

Greetings to everybody

-- Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD (Paris)

Web page: <http://www.linguist.jussieu.fr/~chevilla/>


>I know this is not the usual kind of request we like to consider, and
>it's not particularly important even to me, but ...
>
>I am trying to figure out (or beyond, I guess) the etymology of the word
>for puppet (doll, effigy, image): 'bombe' (Kannada and Tulu), pommai
>(Ta), bomma (Te and Ma). Burrow and Emeneau give cognates with Kolami
>and Parji referring to the eye, eyeball. But somehow the word doesn't
>seem to me to be "very Dravidian." Does anyone on the list know of any
>possible connections with words in other Indian language families? Or
>outside of India? What words in other Indian languages refer to "dolls",
>clay images, wooden figures, and the like? (other than muurthi)
>
>Peter Claus