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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1897.
villages were punished by heavy fines, payable half to the State and half to the Viceroy. The chief punishment of all crimes was fine: as, 15 ticals for abuse without blows, 30 ticals for assault without bloodshed, 30 ticals for adultery, 20 per cent for debt denied, from 100 to 500 ticals for murder and gang robbery, although they were sometimes capitally punished,"
At p. lx. in Document No. 26 pearls in Tenaseerim are valued in tioals, whereas in Mergul we find that as early as 2nd March, 1828, an Officer reporting that the tical had boon superseded by the rupeo.76
In Document No. 83 is a long Account of money dealings with Biam in 1827 at p. lxxxiii. ff., from which we gather that "the Siamese tical, as assayed lately at the Calcutta Mint, is worth one sicca rupee and about three annas and a half. The sicca rapee is not current in Siam, but the Spanish dollar76 is very readily received at the usual market rate of six and
half selungs." At the calculations given, dollars and ticals on these pages work out to 1.625 ticals to 1 dollar.
But on p. lxxxvii. we have an exceedingly interesting note as to methods of dealing with a curronoy without coinage. Opium in Siam was contraband at that date, and the penalty of late years has been forfeiture of the opium, with a flne of eight times the weight in silver." 77
Mrs. Leonowens, authoress of those somewhat inflated books, Siamese Harem Life, and English Governess at the Siamese Court, and who was in Bangkok from 1862 to 1869, gives several instances, interesting because unconsciously introduced, of the way in wbich the curs rency was regarded in her time. In Harem Life we find, at p. 20, that "a reward of twenty caties (about 1,500 dollars)" is offered for a runaway girl, and at p. 40 that these "twenty caties'' had been expended in articles for the use of priests. Here we soo weight used for money, and by a chance note that the metal was silver.78
Dr. Anderson, Mandalay to Momien, p. 90, mentions that a Kachin Sòbwa demanded "two bushels of rupees" as the price of an escort. At p. 432, he noticod that the only way of making a Kachiu Chief grasp the amount of silver in a sum of ten thousand rupees was by telling him that he would receive "three basketfuls of silver.”
Writing a few years previously, Clement Williams (Through Burma to Western China, p. 50) states that he found a man washing gold at Singú, near Mandalay, and the payment of this man by weight of silver comes out rather cariously : - "The digger, who was old, somewhat surly and not at all eager, said that he did not earn more than a moo (threepence) a day, and he only worked because the Governor wanted gold for presentation to his Majesty." A mú is one-tenth of a tickal, which Williams valued at half-a-crown in silver. ! In Scott's Administration Report nf the Northern Shan States for 1892-3, in the remarks, p. 16, on the North Hsen Wi (Theinni according to customary European spelling) State, there is a rough treaty of peace between the Chinese, Kachine and Shans, which well illustrates the mode of dealing with money and of valuing it. "It appears that there was a compact in Kun Löng, drawn ap many jears ago, according to the terms of which the Chinese,
15 In 1843 the rupee seems to have been well understood, for Winter in his intelligent and well illustrated book. A Trip to Rangoon in 1845, says that the charge for a passage in a Burmese boat from Rangoon to Ava was then only about two rupees."
8 Being the money then current in Penang. Quedah, Singapore, eto. See Crawfurd, Siam and Cochin-China Chaps. I., II., and XIX. also in Cochin-China, see op. cit. pp. 225, 517. 189. The term dollar is used also in the great Treaty with China of 1842. See Herstlett's Treaties and Tarifs, China, p. 7. Taels are not mentioned in Trenties till 1858. See op. cit. pp 27, 31, and we seem to have again reverted to dollars in Treaties in 1885, op. cit. p. 109; and to have stuck to that denomination ever since.
11 So in Java at the time of the T'ang Dynasty of China (618-906 A. D.) the pay of troops and the price of girls in marriage was estimated in lump gold. See Indo-China, and Series, Vol. I. p. 143.
8 See also op. cit. pp. 61, 63, 259. At p. 103 a reference seems to be made clearly to "ticals of gold," there callea "pisces of gold," and to a ratio of 16 to 1 between gold and silver. See, too, Siamese Court, pp. 106 f., 108, 298.
