தொகுதிச்சொற்கள்
183
னின்றே எகிபதுவிற்குச் சென்றிருத்தல் வேண்டும். அதனால் அதன் பெயரும் தமிழ்ச்சொல்லாயே யிருத்தல் வேண்டும்.
மாக்கசு முல்லர்பூனைப் பெயரையும் பூனைக் கண்ணையும் பற்றிக் கூறியிருப்பதின் (On the Name of the cat and the cat's eye) சில பகுதிகள் வருமாறு :
“Our domestic cat came to us from Egypt, where it had been tamed by a long process of kindness, or it may be, of worship. In no classical writer, Greek or Roman, do we find the cat as a domestic animal before the third century A.D. It is first mentioned by Caesarius, the physician, brother of Gregory, the theologian of Nzianzus, who died 369 A. D. He speaks of 'kattai endrumo'. About the same time Palladius.... writes "contra.... ponunt" .....it is clear that when Palladius wrote (fourth century A.D.) tame mustelae were still more common than cats, whether called cati or catti.
"Evagrius scholasticus (Hist. Eccl. 17, 23), about 600 A.D., speaks of katta as the common name of ‘ailouros,' here meant therefore, for cat....
"And Isidorus, his contemporary, expresses himself in the same sense when saying (12, 2, 38), 'hune..... catum..... vocant.
“If we admit, in the absence of evidence to the contrary effect, that the tame cat came from Egypt to Greece and Italy in the fourth century A.D., and that the shrewd little animal was called by the Romans catus, everything else becomes intelligible.
"In the ruins of Pompeii, where the bones of horses, dogs and goats have been found, no bones of cats have hitherto been discovered....
“In the language of Romania no traces exist of the word catus, probably because at the time when that Romanic dialect became settled in Dacla, catus did not yet exist as a Latin name for cat.
The Romans did not transfer the name of Mustela to the cat, but by a kind of popular etymology, changed cattus into catus, and these two names, katta and catus, found their way afterwards into nearly all the languages of Europe."
"We now come to the question, whether cat was known at an early time in India. The two principal words in Sanskrit for cat are 'mārjāra' and 'vidala.'
“Mārjāra means the cleaner, the cat being well known for its
cleanliness..."
"The second name for cat in Sanskrit is vidāla or bidāla..."
