balí m. (perhaps fr. √ bhṛ) tribute, offering, gift, oblation (in later language always with √ hṛ), [RV.] &c. &c.
tax, impost, royal revenue, [Br.]; [Mn.]; [MBh.] &c.
any offering or propitiatory oblation (esp. an offering of portions of food, such as grain, rice &c., to certain gods, semi-divine beings, household divinities, spirits, men, birds, other animals and all creatures including even lifeless objects; it is made before the daily meal by arranging portions of food in a circle or by throwing them into the air outside the house or into the sacred fire; it is also called bhūta-yajña and was one of the 5 mahā-yajñas, or great devotional acts; cf. [RTL. 411, 421]), [GṛŚrS.]; [Mn.] esp. [iii, 69], [71]; [MBh.] &c. (often ifc. with the object, the receiver, the time, or the place of the offering)
fragments of food at a meal, [W.]
a victim (often a goat or buffalo) offered to Durgā, [MW.]
the handle of a chowrie or fly-flapper, [Megh.]
N. of a Daitya (son of Virocana; priding himself on his empire over the three worlds, he was humiliated by Viṣṇu, who appeared before him in the form of a Vāmana or dwarf, son of Kaśyapa and Aditi and younger brother of Indra, and obtained from him the promise of as much land as he could pace in three steps, whereupon the dwarf expanding himself deprived him of heaven and earth in two steps, but left him the sovereignty of Pātāla or the lower regions), [MBh.]; [Pur.] &c. (cf. [IW. 328])
N. of Indra in the 8th Manv-antara, [Pur.]
of a Muni, [MBh.]
of a king, [ib.]; [Pañcat.]
of a son of Su-tapas, [Hariv.]; [Pur.] (cf. vali).