gomayañca

gomaya

nt + ca (enclitic conjunction)

cowdung; cowpat; lit. made of cow

Built from

go — root · cow
From PIE *gwou-. Cognates: English cow, Latin bos, Greek bous, Sanskrit go. The concrete animal, essential to pastoral life, becomes the canonical sacrificial victim in Vedic thought, and in Pali texts appears in similes of labour, support, and sustenance.
maya — ending · made of, consisting of
Derives from √mā 'to make, fashion, form'. Suffix -maya productively forms adjectives meaning 'made of' or 'consisting of' (e.g. annmaya 'made of food', kammamaya 'made of action'). Here it marks the material or composition from which the noun is fashioned.
ca — prefix · and
Enclitic coordinating conjunction, attaching to the preceding word's inflected form (here accusative gomayaṃ). It links items in a series without emphasis, equivalent to Latin -que.

Analysis. gomaya + ca: 'cowdung and' or 'also cowdung'. The enclitic ca ('and') appends to the accusative form gomayaṃ in the sandhi, both words retained in the inflected surface form.

Etymology. go- (cow, from PIE *gwou-; cognates: English cow, Latin bos, Greek bous) + maya (made of, consisting of; from √mā 'make, fashion', compare English make, Latin facere); literally 'made of cow' or 'cow-made'. The semantic shift from 'made of cow' to 'cow's dung' is metonymic—the excrement as the characteristic product or output of a cow.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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