I'm sure you're right about its being a
substrate word -- as one would reasonably expect, given the geographical
distribution of peafowl. The Munda languages have only very recent attestation,
so Munda -> Old Indo-Aryan borrowings are notoriously difficuly to trace, but
what you write looks plausible. I'm not really qualified to assess this
etymology, as I know very little about Munda reconstructions and Munda
historical phonology.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 5:38 PM
Subject: [tied] Peacock
mayu_ra is peacock in Sanskrit.
It appears that this
is derived from the substratum Mun.d.a word:
marak = peahen
(Santali)
Are there IE cognates?