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Originally Posted by ariel
... “Cutting” and “knife” are very basic words. Such words, necessary for oral communication between the members of very early human communities, seem to share common elements.
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Speaking of which, when searching the 1206 pages of Luso-Asiatic Glossary (Monsenhor Sebastião Dalgado 1919) one most surprisingly can not find the term katar (or catar, as the K is absent in Portuguese) as a weapon, but finds (possible) analogies in that the term is related with light slim and fast boats that
cut the waves (bolds are mine). Fray João Moura derives it from the Persian Kãtür, which however there are no records of such dictations in Arabic and Persian. Crooke suggests as possible ethym the sanscrit
chatura "legere". However Dalgado goes for the version malaiala
kattiri or neo-Arico
Kãtar, from the sanscrit
kartari "scissors"
literally cutter, from the verb
krt "
to cut". Dalgado further opines that this boat could well be called
katar, which is employed in various metaphoric senses like, in Concani,
truss, pyramid, obelisc.
On the other hand, the term katar (or catar) in his strict wording only appears as Persian-Arabic "qatâr", meaning a set of (often seven) camels or mules, used by cargo collectors that cover all Persia transporting goods from a city to another (Domingos Vieira 1529).
As i first said, among 1250 pages of terms picked or shared with Asians since the XV century. Unless some unknown transliteration prevents from reaching further.