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156
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1897.
Upper Burma, who is, say, over fifty years of age, must have in his or her (for the women are the principal hucksters)10 youth habitually dealt in an uncoined currency.
This uncoined currency my specimens prove to have been: -
(1) lumps of metal whose fineness could only be known by actual rough assay or by appearance;
(2) lumps of metal whose fineness, but not weight, was attested by a stamp or mark;
(8) irregular tokens.
Assay was, and is still, carried on by recognised jewellers and assay-masters in the usual Indian style with wax and touchstone, and by comparing the touch with that of pieces of recognised or ascertained standard. Value is estimated by reference to silver standards, i. e., a piece of gold or copper is said to weigh so many rupees and annas (strictly, tickals12 and mús, or tenths of a tickal), and its value is found by simple multiplication, with a deduction for alloy, or by division, as the case may be.
However, for ordinary business purposes the main test for fineness was appearance, for it is not so difficult to tell fineness by the appearance of unworn lumps of metal as it would seem to be prima facie. A reference to Plate I. and to the descriptions of the figures in the letter-press explaining the Plate will prove this ocularly to the reader. The reason is as follows 13 :
There are several methods of extracting silver from the ore, and each method leaves its own mark on the products; and I have found that after a while I could detect the quality of certain classes of silver myself without a reference to assay. Long practice makes dealers adepts in judging silver, worn and unworn, at sight; and I found that most of the old "bazaar" women could do so at once with fair accuracy. I have often tried their powers by saying that a worn lump of silver I have exhibited to them was of a certain class, and have been corrected at once by being told that it was of the class to which I had previously ascertained it to belong by assay. But, owing to the introduction, first of King Mindôn's coins, and now of the British, this kind of practical knowledge is rapidly disappearing, and the younger women and girls, who have begun to trade since the general introduction of coinage, are no better judges of silver than European women are. They are not even so good as Indian women, as they never wear
10 Cf. Raffles, Java, 2nd Ed., Vol. I. p. 394, on Javan women as hucksters.
11 Pegolotti's Chapter XXXV. is on assays of gold and silver, and should be well worth while to study, if made accessible. See Yule's Cathay, Vol. II. p.307. Compare the origin of Roman Coinage, Poole, Coins and Medals, p. 42 f.
13 Huc's "ounces" used in Tibet (Nat. Ill. Library Ed., Vol. I. pp. 144, 146) were I presume the tael or quadruple tickal. With Huc's statements can be compared the statement of a writer in Toung Pao, Vol. II. p. 168, in an article entitled, Sur les moyens et les voies de communication des Provinces de la Chine avoisinant le Tongking. He gives throughout prices in "livres," and then adds a note: "The livre is of 16 ounces and the ounce is 37 gr. 24 centigr. The livre of silver was worth at the commencement of 1891, 1,650 sapèques." In Pegolotti's time (early 14th century A. D.) gold was bought by the saggio (3 ounce) in silver. Yule, Cathay, Vol. II. p. 297. So de Morga (Hakluyt Society's Ed. pp. 340, 341) says that in the Philippines in his time (1598-1609) the Chinese paid in silver and reals, for they do not like gold," and that the Japanese were paid "chiefly in reals, though they are not so set upon them as the Chinese, as they have silver in Japan." See also Two Years in Ava, p. 281; Anderson, Siam, pp. 61, 127. Maxwell, Journey on foot to the Patani Frontier, p. 48, however notes that in the neighbourhood of the Belong Gold Mines silver was scarce and that gold was the currency in 1875. Ridgeway, Origin of Currency, p. 3, explains the change of meaning in the denominations kyât, (tickal) ma and pè briefly and effectually thus: "The names of monetary units hold their ground long after they themselves have ceased to be in actual use, as we observe in such common expressions "bet a guinea" or worth a "groat," although these coins are no longer in circulation, and so the French sou has survived for a century in popular parlance and the Thaler has lived into the new German monetary system."
13 Prinsep, who assayed the Ava bullion sent over to India after the First Burmese War as indemnity, says, Useful Tables, p. 80, "The figures given by the action of the fire upon a thick brown coating of glaze (of the oxides of lead and antimony) answer in some degree the purpose of a die impression," Malcom, Travels, Vol. II. p. 269, says practically the same thing.
