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August, 1897.]
CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
199
evidently no greater faith in the piceaz 18 than had Yule, and unless the "silver bits" ho bought with rupees at Mandalay at four per cent. exchange were of bò silver, which was exceedingly unlikely, he was swindled by the Bazaar pwerus of Mandalay.
Yule also says that "bosidas th939 pwsz845 there is another class so oalled. They are brokers appointed by the Government, who conduct all purchases made by foreigners of produce for exportation, apparently with some notion of keeping a check on the exportation of precious metals. They receive a half per cent, from the seller in all wholesale transactions." This must be the tarega, of whom we hear so much from the oldest of the travellers, and is probably the pymon of Symes (Avu, p. 326), thongh Symes seems to have coufounded the Pymon (equal ? pw&non, i. e., Government bullion broker) with the pw.vis.
Flouest, who was in Burma about ten years before Symes, writes thus: - "There is again in Rangoon a class of men very useful to the stranger. They are a species of broker or exchange agent, and are called professionally poiment (? podemôn). They receive and pay for their constituents. In this way one avoids being cheated in the quality and weight of silver. It is necessary to take great care to record documents, and to do it in a manner that they cannot be counterfeited. Lis poiments' take one per cent. of all the sums in their charge and are responsible for their fall distribution, which they certify by receipts for the sums they have paid away." Flouest, then, evidently hala smell opinion of the honesty of the brokers.
They nnturally always loomed large in the eyes of the old travellers. In 1796 we find Cox (Burnhinn Empire, p. 12) congratulating himself that, when he went to view the great payoda at Rangoon, he found that the "poyzah or sircar" had a house close by, and so gave him a good view of the place and people unmolested.<7
We hear of them from time to time when European merchants began trading in Barma and Pegu, and Yule's quotations in Hobson-Jobson, 8. v. Tarega, are so fully to the point in this connection, that I give them here in full: - "This (word tarega) represents a word for :: broker (or person analogous to the Hong merchants of Canton in former days) in Pegu, in the days of its prosperity. The word is from South Iulia. We have in Telugu, taraja "the occupation of a broker;" Tamil, taragini," a broker."
"1588. --Sono in lega otto sonsari del Re che si cliainano Tarego li quali sono obligati di far vendete tutte le mercantie - per il prezzo corrente. - Ces. Folerici, in Romnio. iii. 395.
"1583. - E se fosse alcano che tempo del pagamento per non pagar si absentasse dalla città, o si asconlesse, il Tarrecà e obligato pagar per lui. - I Tarregà cosi si domandano i Sensari. - G. Balli, f. 107, 108.
"1587. -- There are in Pegu eight brokers, whom they call Tareghe, which are bound to sell your goods at the price they be woorth and you give them for their labour two in the hundred and they be bound to make your debt good, becanse you sell your marchandises upon their word. - R. Fitch in Hakluyt, ii. 393.948
45 They are roferred to in Two Years in Ava, in p. 280, as a particular class of silver-smiths. Something of the same systum must have existed in Portuguese India in the early Seventeenth century. Soo Pyrard de Laval's accounts of the cherijer (trafa). of Goa: Hak. Suc. El., Vol. II. pp. 37 ff. Part of the E. I. Company's ostablish mat at Mdr. in 1711 Way" two Essay Mastors, both at 120 l. per An." Lookyor, R. J. Trad, p. 14.
46 Town) Pao, Vol. II. p. 10 : 800 also Hunter, Pegi, p. 85, who was in Rangoon the year befo"e Flouost.
AT Cox, or rather his son and editor, is one of the most perfect coiners of words among Iudo-European writers. Thun, poyzuhas above becomes poisah at p. 179, and "poixat or shroff " at p. 186.
+ There is a word tarr., constantly used by British merchauts in Siam and Burma in the Seventeenth century. bar aot explained in Yule, which seems to be counocted with turja. It meant a written license to trade, op * Hamou Gibbon quaintly puts it "tarras or irea Patants." See Auderson, Siam, PP. 54, 113, 117, 124, 125, 127.
