odd ideas (was: Re: Shaved Beaver}

--- In cybalist@..., "anthonyappleyard" <MCLSSAA2@...> wrote:

>
> There are old Indian reports of India being invaded by "demons"
> from a land in the sky, and they all looked alike, and they wore
> garments called nivatakavacha, which was interpreted as "no-air-
> suits". Alas for someone's ufological ideas, someone else pointed
> that Sanskrit "ni-" = "without" is correctly "niH" and would be
> "nir-" if the next sound is a voiced consonant, and the word
> means "practical layer garment", i.e. several layers of ordinary
> garments, and the land in the sky was likely merely Tibet.

The online Sanskrit dictionary does give 'nivAta' as "windless"
and 'kavaca' as "armour, mail, jacket". Maybe that's the source
of the "no-air-suit" idea. Of course that's still a long way
from "space suit"! I can't help thinking of the large heavy felt
overcoats worn by various Turkic, Magyar and Iranian shepherds.
The Ossetic word for this type of coat is 'nymæt' < Ir. *nimata-,
which can also mean just "felt". Could 'nivatakavaca' be the
Sanskritization of an Iranian word? What's the length of the
word's second vowel?

David