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 321

DECEMBER, 1897.]
CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
315
The Adenanthera pavoning, unlike the beautiful creeper abrus, is a large deciduous tree; bat, like the abrus, it is extremely well known for its many uses. It yields a gum, a dye and an oil. Its leaves, seeds and wood yield remedies for many common disorders. Its wood is also well known in the building and furniture trades. The bright scarlet seeds again are nsed as personal ornaments and as a domestic cement. And finally out of its wood is made the paste for the universal tilak marks of India.
It is the seeds, when black with age, that are the typical weights, stated to be equal to 4 grs, or 2 of the Abrus.
The Abrus precatorius is found in the Himalayas up to 3,000 ft. and all over India, Ceylon and Siam. The Adenanthera paronina is found in South India, Bengal and Burma. Both are, in their various forms, universal in the Asiatic tropics, but the Adenanthera appears to be more strictly confined to the actual tropics than the Abrus, which may account for translators of Sanskrit works referring the sense of such words as raktiká to the seeds of the Abrus precatorius alone, to their own consequent confusion, when they come to find the weight thereof to be technically double of the reality.
As a weight, the weight of the Abrus precatorius seed, the rate of the races of Hindustan, is taken at 1:75 grs., based on the calculation of Edward Thomas in the Numismatic Chronicle, N. S., Vol. IV. p. 131. According to Prinsep, Useful Tables, p. 97 n., it is 1.875 grs., or 122 grammes,20 and to Edward Thomas' note to Prinsep's Tables, in his Edition thereof, p. 22, 1.93 grs. Colebrooke, Essays, Vol. II. p. 529, says it is 1 5/16 grs. = 1.3125 grs., based on weighments of the seed by Sir William Jones.
All these variations are merely such as may be expected in the circumstances, when basing & scale on a natural production, and Thomas has pertinently remarked, Initial Coinage of Bengal, Pt. II. p. 6, that erratic as a test the growth of the seed of the guhja-creeper under the varied incidents of soil and climate may be, it has nevertheless bad the remarkable faculty of securing a uniform average throughout the entire continent of India."
Going further afield into regions beyond the Indian borders, it will be seen from what follows in this Chapter, that equivalents of the rali are still the basis of weight denominations, and that Thomas' remark in the main applies for practical parposes, assuming, as he also should have done apparently, that the term rati itself denotes a conventional weight. Mason, an original observer, in his Natural Productions of Burina, Ed. 1850, p. 196, states that "the jewel. lers use the seed of a species of Abrus (precatorius), red with a black eye or black with a white eye, for small weigbts. It is a popular belief that they uniformly weigh exactly one grain Troy, but I have weighed many and found them to vary from one to two grains. The Burmese use them within a fraction for two-grain weights." Then under Adenanthera (pavonina) he says "another seed which the books represent as usually four grains, is in common use by the Burmese, as equivalent to two of the preceding, which is about two grains. The seeds, however, have to be selooted for the purpose: many of them not weighing more than two or three grains each." Just so: we should probably assume that this was always done as to both classes of seeds at all times, ancient and modern.
The view that we cannot accept the rati, whether as the name of the Abrus goed alone, or jointly as the seed of the Abrus or Adenanthera, As anything but a conventional weight is confirmed by a remark in Theobald's huge edition of Mason's work, 1882-3, Vol. II. p. 540, under Adenanthera. He tells us of variant names, vis., Entada Arborea, Griff., and Adenan. thra Gersenü, Scheff., and then says: - "Var. a genuina: seeds half inch in diam. Var. B microsperita : seeds half the size. Var. a in Tropical forests all over Barma and the adjacent islands up to 3,000 ft. Great Nicobar." It would be impossible in such conditions to do anything but use selected soods as standard weights, and I take it that the case with the Abrus
It is 128 grammes according to Ridgeway, Origin of Coinage, p. 194.