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piṇḍapātena

piṇḍapāta

masc instr sg of piṇḍapāta (noun)

1. alms food; lit. lump dropping

Built from

• piṇḍa — root · lump, morsel
  Likely onomatopoetic; expresses roundness and compactness. No secure Indo-European cognate.
• pāta — stem · falling, dropping
  From √pat (to fall, fly); cognate with Latin penna, English feather. The concrete sense 'falling' survives in the compound.
• -ena — ending · instrumental singular
  Marks the instrumental case in singular masculine nouns; indicates the means or instrument (here, 'by means of alms-food').

Analysis. piṇḍa (lump, morsel) + pāta (falling, dropping); the term denotes food given as alms, visualized as a lump that falls into the alms-bowl. Central to bhikkhunī practice: the Buddha's fifth rule permits only piṇḍapātena bhikkhunī to wander for alms.

Etymology. piṇḍa is likely onomatopoetic or reduplicative in origin (compare piṇ- in piṅguva). pāta derives from √pat (to fall, fly), cognate with Latin penna (feather, wing) and English feather via Proto-Indo-European *pet- (to fly, fall). The compound imagery is concrete: food materializes as a falling lump.

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

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