Indian Antiquary Vol 26

SR No.: 032518
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 360
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 207

AUGUST, 1897.]
be obeyed. Each lady must again be paraded in turn to make payment for what she had taken. His Majesty remained to see fair play and entered into the spirit of the trafficking, langhing heartily at every dispute which subsequently occurred. Scales and weights were now introduced, but this I could not stand. My amour propre rebelled against it. I insisted on making over this part of the play to Shwai-ee (Shwê 1, a Musalman servant with a Burmese name). I professed my ignorance of the touch of gold and the face of silver, an avowal that no doubt relieved the apprehensions of the ladies, who were looking for a grasping creditor, and who, with all their good-humoured smiles, were not free from a spice of avarice, or it might be only a love of bargaining. Never was a man so baited as the poor Malabaree (the servant). Whenever he gave his honest opinion of the value of the gold, he was instantly assailed, accused of cheating, threatened, coaxed, ballied and called very hard names. When I was appealed to, I always gave judgment in favour of the lady, for finding that the gentle creatures were, by their own unbiassed and voluntary assessment of prices, paying five and six times as much as the goods cost, I could well afford to be generous. The easy indifference I manifested in submitting to what they knew to be attempts at imposition gained me high favour, while it conferred also perhaps the character of a green-horn. With all their eagerness to take petty advantages, honesty was enforced in the main and no one was allowed to evade the payment of her debt. My factotum put up his gold and silver into bags."63
CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
201
Mr. Gouger's subsequent difficulty was that, having amassed thus a weight of silver and gold equal to about £8,000, he could neither legally transport the metal itself, nor goods representing its value, out of the country, except by bribing officials, but he notes that the bribing, though heavy, was worth a merchant's while, considering the prices paid for goods imported (p. 611.).
I must clinch my evidence by a passage from a book by a well known Burmese writer, Maung Bah Wah. It is in English and is entitled, The Outward Man and the Inward Man. At p. 55, the writer gives a reminiscence of his childhood, which is of the first importance for the present subject:- "I remember when I was a child, how I hoped to see my father come back from his trading tour, and my mother from the bazaar, where she went only once a week, or sometimes twice, and brought provisions sufficient for a week. We had no copper or silver coins then as you have now (writing for his grand-children), and with which the present-day children know how to buy and sell. In those days it was not every grown-up person that knew how to properly assay lumps of silver, which were more or less impure and which were then in current use. Some are preserved in the Phayre Museum55 here (Rangoon)."
That travellers had to be habitually cautions as to receiving bullion, we have many instances, of which the following is a fair example. Dr. Richardson, in his Journal of a Fourth Mission to the Interior of the New Settlements in the Tenusserim Provinces, in 1836,56 writes of the Mônè State; and says: "In the meantime he (the military commander) sent me for current expenses 48h ticals (called 50) of coarse silver, or Rupees 32." This shews
63 At p. 63 he says that the people "came with bags of silver and gold in bullion to pay for their purchases,"
54 A remarkable book by a remarkable man. He was a leading member of an ardent sect of Christians in Rangoon, who have, with an independence of spirit and thought very notable in the conditions, worked out for them. selves, and formed without extraneous aid, a dogma and ritual of their own quite worth study. Maung Bah Wah very kindly presented me with the literature of the Sect, and I hope some day to give an account of it. The origin of the Sect is explained in "A Statement of the True Case," 1886, in English. Its ideas are contained in The Lord's Supper, Puèdò, 1887; The Lord's Day, Obkné, 1885; The Fellowship of the Apostles, Thinspwèjing, 1888; Hymns, 1885; New Spiritual Songs, 1887. All these books are in Burmese.
55 I have gathered in conversation with Maung Bah Wah that they were presented by himself and were specimens of ngwin, a species of silver currency to be described in its proper place later on,
House of Commons, Parl. Papers, No. 240 of 1869, p. 124,