Indian pancake

[Elliot Stern]

>Dear Professor Thillaud,
>I believe the word you are looking for is:
>roTI or roTIkA
>which is a flat bread on the style of pita bread rather than a pancake.
>
>best,
>
>Edeltraud Harzer Clear
>Asian Studies
>University of Texas at Austin


Hi,
Would it be apu_pa? It occurs in RV and in almost all Indian languages
(with dialectical variants)and is a cake of flour.
Regards.
Kalyanaraman


While both of these answers are acceptable, it may be added that only
apuupa is well attested from very early times.

I have no idea how far back roTii and roTikaa go in Sanskrit.
Monier-Williams' dictionary says that roTikaa occurs in bhaavamizra's
bhaavaprakaaza. Does Dominik or someone have a date for this author/work?
Has anyone seen any early attestations for either roTii or roTikaa in
Sanskrit?

It should be noted that roTii is probably a loan word into Sanskrit from
either MIA or NIA. roTikaa seems to be the same loan word with an affix, or
a sanskritized form of *roTiyaa. I recall having heard a form like this
uttered repeatedly in Varanasi, especially by servants in the house I lived
in, but I can't be sure that it wasn't really a plural form (I might, eg,
have missed nasalization of the final vowel). These servants mixed many
Bhojpuri words into their Hindi. CDIAL 10837 reconstructs an OIA form
*roTTa, and does not mention any NIA form like *roTiyaa (other than
ruTTiaa, given in Dezinaamamaalaa). Any comments?


Elliot M. Stern
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USA

telephone: 215 747 6204