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

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1897.
the Kachcha Nagas, the Hill-Tipperas, the Kacharis (Bodo) and the Garos, frequently in extension, from my own vid voce notes, of the information I have found in books.
Lastly with a view to assisting future students in the study of the older writers and the pranks they have played with terms and names, I have introduced a section on terminology.
1. Seeds of the Abrus and the Adenanthers. There are to be found used in Burma and in Barmese documents two sets of denominations for weights and measures : — the Påļi and what may be termed tbe Vernacular. It is with this last that we are in these pages principally concerned.15
As so much depends on the seeds of the Abrus Precatorius and of the Adenanthera Pavonina in Oriental weight systems, I will make first an enquiry into the point, merely pausing to regret that these long and not very intelligible Latin names are probably too well established now to be superseded by the more practicable English ones of Crab's-eyele and Indian Liquorice seed for the former, and of Redwood seed and Red Sandalwood seed17 for the latter.
Both are known in Burma as yw 6,18 and they are constantly mixed up in consequence, though more precisely to be differentiated by the terms ywêgwe and chinywe for the abrus seed and ywêji or great yw for the adenanthera seed. Popularly, however, two abrus seeds equal one adenanthera seed. Both will also, I think, be found on examination to be mixed up, in native Indian writings, under the names of rati, ruktiki, gunja, krishnala, and so on, a fact which, if correct, goes far to explain the confusion of rati and “double rati” in discussions on this subject.
To enquire first what these plants are and where they grow I turn to the chief original authority on such matters, Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Pruducts of India, s.v.3. Abrus and Adenanthera. Of the abrus creeper there are three closely allied varieties now known as precatorius, pulchellus, fructiculosus. It is the precatorius which is so celebrated. Its roots, seeds and leaves are very widely used as medicinal specifics for a great variety of common disorders and physical troubles : its seeds as a food when boiled and as a poisonous. injection when raw by criminals; and also as personal and household ornaments, and for rosaries, whence its name.
The seeds have several varieties of colour: the ordinary varieties being red with black eye, black with white eye, and white. They are at times also black, yellow and rosy. It is the red and black variety that is used usually as the type of a weight.19
15 In putting forward my ideas on this subject, I cannot help feeling strongly the limits of the Library I am able to consult in the circumstances in which I have to write. It may be that I am morely flogging a dead horse, but it is necessary for the present purpose to be as clear as possible on the matter now under discussion, and my remarks may in that sense be of real use in any case. They are made at great length, because, if, as I apprehend, I am here breaking new ground, it is better to let the argument work itself out for others, as it has for myself, than to present it for the first time as Ruccinctly as one would an argument which is finally settled.
16 The plant is growing freely in my own garden as I write, and is visited by the European and Eurasian children of the place, who know the bright scarlet and black seeds well as King Charles's Tears, just as their little brothers and sisters in Burma know the hard, bright seeds of the wild Coix lacryma, so much used by the Kareps us dress ornaments, as Job's Tears. See Watt, Dict, of Economic Products, 2,0, Theobald's El. of Mason's Products, Vol. II, p. 107: Ridgeway's Origin of Coinage, p. 186 n.
11 It is not the Red Sandalwood, Red Sanderswood, Red Sappanwood, of Commerce, which is Pterocarpus sa stalim, allied to the padauk, or Andaman Redwood, of Burma and the Andamans.
15 One specimen of the Adenanthera pavonina seed was given to me as the seed of the mahnya, but this must have been a mistake as the mahdyd or pen-mahaya is the Colocasia orlora, a medicinal plant: Theobald's Ed. of Mason's Burma, Vol. II. p. 131. The seed, in question, besides being a weight, was said to cure snake bite.
19 Equal in the Pañjab to about 8 grs. of bannalti rice. Op. cit., loc. cit.