Etymon: paTTaN, pattan, patan

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

At 02:53 PM 11/15/97 +0100, you wrote:
>At 1:36 +0100 15/11/97, DR.S.KALYANARAMAN wrote:
>>
>>Close to the Sarasvati River, we have names of ancient settlements such as
>>Prabhas Patan (SaurASTra), Pattan Minara (Bahawalpur Province) (cf.
>>Mughal, Ancient Cholistan, 1997 where a 'pre-Islamic' shrine is identified
>>on the banks of the River).
>>
>>paTTaNa is a common suffix in names of ports such as chennappaTTaNam,
>>macilIpaTTaNam, vizAkhapaTTaNam.
>>
>>Is the etymon paTTaN related to an ancient port of call? Is it related to
>>paTTi, a street? If so, Pattan Minara could have been a terminal port town
>>on the desiccated river?
>>
>
>        In an article of Language, 12, 133, R.A.Hall jr. suggest to link
>paTTana <? *partana with the Latin portus "passage, door, haven", a
>well-known eurindien word (see engl.ford, &c.). In Indo-Iranian, we have
>the av. peretuS "ford" but the root is considered as unknown in Sanskrit.
>This root is in fact linked to *per- "to cross" and (except perhaps the old
>alternance r/n) without direct rapport with path, panthAs, pontus, pontos.
>        But your examples are very interresting ones; do you have name
>alternances with tIrtha ? or saras ?
>        We have perhaps a borrowing with pattana "town (MBh)" but, indeed,
>the evolution 'rt' > 'TT' seems a bit strange (but phonetically very
>acceptable). Do someone have an other example of it ?
>        Regards,
>Dominique
>
>Dominique THILLAUD
>Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France
>
>

In Dravidian languages RR -> TR -> TT is observed. I do not know whether
it is relevent here.

sarma.