snake & mongoose in ancient India

[Rajarshi Banerjee]

The stress, again, should be on "could". Unfortunately, the otter is *not*
= Skt. babhru/Avest.
bawri,
but  otter =  Skt. udra, and one of the best attested Indo-European animals.


Regularly derived from the very *archaic* IE word for water, (i.e. 'water
animal'): IE *wod-R ,   gen. **ud-n-s  'water' (archaic  r/n heterocliticon
as in Skt. ahar, Gen. ahnas): Engl. water, Hittite uidaar, Gen. wedenas,
Skt. udan (Loc.), udnas (Gen.) etc.

otter:  IE *udro,  Skt. udra, Avestan udra, Greek hudros (and hudra!),
Lith. Udras, Udra;
O.H. German ottar, O.Church Slav. vydra; Serbo-Croatian vidra, etc.
see Pokorny, IE Dict. (Indogerm. Woerterbuch) 1959 :  79

A clear, OLD derivation. Skt. udra' otter' is an old IE word.

No dams, or flat tails in the Avesta, but a  Goddess' dress made of 30
beaver skins. Specifically of a fem. beaver with 4 cubs (within the range
of a beaver).
Does one make dresses of water rats, etc?? Or mongoose??

Since IE *bhebhru 'beaver' (see earlier message) is attested in a large
number of  IE  languages, is found in Central Asia even today, and  since
Avestan bawri- is derived from the IE word, why to substitute  it by an
unknown species (any water animal or the otter) for the well known and
linguistically and textually well attested Avestan /IE one?

RB> It certainly looks like beavers and otters are pretty distinct entities
in IE languages or in a PIE homeland. But if beavers are not found in iran
then both bawri and udra could become references to the same animal. Otters
are hunted for their pelts even in southeast asia. 30 beavers pelts to make
a garment for a single person seems excessive. A small otter could fit the
bill. Ofcourse the figure 30 need not be taken literally either.

Otter in hindi is: ud bilao which is connected to sanskrit udra, bilao
ofcourse means cat i.e. water cat

In bengali otter is bhOndOR maybe bhOndOr

Can you explain? The word has a voiced aspirate and a probable retroflex,
nasal vowel. ( Some bengalis convert all r sounds to retroflexes). Is it IE
, munda or dravidian?

thanks, RB