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sporting and fouling its body with slush, plants its pair of feet on your head.
3. Different meaning-shades of -otaFrom the materials presented, it will be noticed that bakota- has been understood either simply as a synonym of baka- or else as a variety of the same. Accordingly -ota- would be more or less a pleonastic or diminutive suffix. But as is well known, such suffixes can hardly escape the association of endearing or deprecative shades. In the Trișaști passage (No.4), the crane is explicitly qualified as 'wicked' and 'evil-minded', So also in the passage No.6 the contrast between the status and conduct of the Hamsa and the Bakota is reinforced if the latter has pejorative shade - 'before that lowly crane' etc.
This double function of -ota- finds support through what is in all likelihood its Middle Indo-Aryan source. We have seen that bakoța- is not found earlier than about the tenth century. Several bases with the suffix -oda- can be cited from Late Middle Indo-Aryan and hence it may not be unreason- able to suggest that -ota- of bakota- is but a Sanskritization of MIA - oda
4. Late MIA Suffix -odaYogindudeva's Parmappapayāsu (c. 10th cent.?) 2.118 is as follows :
2. Other words ending in -ota- are obscure. For example sakhotaka -
“Trophis Aspera (a small, crooked, ugly tree) (MW.), and karota(along with karoti-, kararaka; karaka-. PK. karaya-, karara; Guj. karando, karodiya etc., with one or more of these meanings : water vessel, bowl, begging bowl, cocoanul cup, skull“). For karota- etc. and their obscure mutual relationship see Mayrhofer, op. cit., under the
respective words. 3. Ed. Upadhye, A.N. Second Edition, 1960.
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