origin of ばか


i noticed that a word in bangla, বোকা (boka), meaning a fool or foolish, was similar to the japanese ばか (baka), also meaning a fool; i looked them up on wiktionary and whilst বোকা was inherited from a sanskrit word बुक्क (bukka) meaning a he-goat, the origin of ばか was not clear, possibly coming from another sanskrit word मोह (moha), meaning folly. could the two words be etymologically related or is this just a nice coincidence? i checked the japanese wikipedia article for the word, and i think this similarity is mentioned there as well: https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/馬鹿

the wiktionary page gives two possible origins for ばか, rather than only one, another origin being from an old japanese word. on first glance it seemed bukka would’ve made somewhat more sense than moha, given a semantic shift of using animals to mean something foolish, as well as a perhaps easier phonological shift of bukka->baka, rather than moha->baka, but i’m not sure. i had asked this on the asklinguistics sub but no one replied to my other points

by swgeek1234

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