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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
The copper seal above spoken of is an ordinary Burmese seal, badly cut, with the word myins ùn on it and so must have belonged to one of the cavalry regiments. It, as well as the copper button, was looked on as currency, because it was of true copper and weighed roughly a pice.
158
[JUNE, 1897.
Besides the above, a third specimen of token currency, in the shape of a British quarteranna of 1887 with the obverse filed smooth, was tendered as a pice in payment of a ferry fee. Here there may have been swindling on the part of the person who filed down the coin, but the bona fules of the old woman who tendered it was never questioned. In her eyes it was currency because it was copper and weighed half a pice or thereabouts.
The Tônkhal and Lahapâ Nâgas of the Manipur Territories act much in the same spirit, when they buy their brides for "Manipûrî sel about the value of ten rupees." The sél is a small rude coin of bell-metal of very low value, and is the only currency recognised in those parts.17
In the same neighbourhood we have a curious instance of the British rupee being a token pure and simple in Woodthorpe's Lushai Expedition, 1871-1872, p. 182, where he says: "A cooly, having no use for his money and being no doubt utterly tired of his monotonous Commissariat fare, gave one rupee for a fowl, which thenceforth was established by the Lushais as the standard price,18 though of the actual value of the rupee they were entirely ignorant, appreciating more highly a few copper coins (but ? sél). A few sepoys, who had a supply of the latter, took advantage of it to buy back, at about a sixth of their value, the rupees which the Lushais had previously received from the officers."
John Crisp in his " Account of the Inhabitants of the Poggy, or Nassau Islands, lying off Sumatra," confirms the proposition that, where coin is not the usual currency, any kind of coin will answer the purpose of currency for what it may be intrinsically worth. He says, writing in 1792, that the Nassau Islanders' " knowledge of metals is entirely derived from their communication with the inhabitants of Sumatra. They are still strangers to use of coin of any kind, and a metal coat-button would be of equal value in their est eem with a piece of gold or silver coin, either of which would be immediately be hung about the neck as an ornament." Their currency was a "sort of iron hatchet or hand-bill," a statement in itself interesting enough.20
Strettell (Ficus Elastica, p. 139) in 1876 found that the Kachins valued Burmese rupees only for their intrinsic worth in silver, and British rupees for making necklaces. Even when they took rupees in payment, they would only value them at a weight in lump-silver worth ten annas (p. 185).
This notion was common in Lower Burma as late as 1825, for Alexander, Travels, p. 27, mentions that in the neighbourhood of Rangoon he found Spanish dollars used as a neck ornament by village children and pleased them greatly by adding "rupee-pieces."
To carry this class of evidence down to 1893, I may note that in his Report on the Administration of the Northern Shan States for 1892-3, Mr. Scott tells us, p. 30, that "in the East of Hsi-Paw (Thibaw) an impression has fastened on the people that the rupee of the East. India Company's date with the impressions of George IV., William IV., and the rupee in which Her Majesty's head appears without the crown, are not valid tender and are worth no more than fourteen annas."
17 Soe Brown's Stastistical Account of the Native State of Manipur, pp. 40, 89. When this writer says (p. 31), that the Kansai Nagas sell slaves for money, paying Rs. 50, toks 70, for them, he no doubt meant payment in s. 18 I fear that so far the story must be apocryphal.
19 As. Res. Vol. VI. pp. 71-91, and Miscell. Papers on Indo-China, Vol. I. p. 71.
29 See post, Section on Barter and Non-metallic Currencies.
