On the Use of Indian Terms for Identification of Weapon Types

[fernando]

Originally Posted by ariel

And, BTW, Portugese version of the origin of Indian Pata traces it to the ( surprise, surprise!) Portugese word for paw:-)...

Let me also vote for surprise that not for probability. Indeed paw in portuguese is pata; with accentuation on the first 'a'.
I don't know how wide this attribution is spread out there; i find it, for one, in the (bilingual) work Rites of Power by Dr. Caravana, a phisician and collector. However he cares to write that the term will possibly be connected to such Portuguese terminology. Even so, a surprising assumption from his part, once one of his menthors and supplier, Rainer Raehnhardt, pretends that the term Pata ( quote: ) comes from the Patãs (Pathan), one of several divisions of the Xátria (Kchatrya) cast.