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OCTOBER, 1897.) CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
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the articles most coveted in exchange being cloth and salt."54 This last quotation brings us close to conventional barter, a stage beyond a general exchange of articles as convenience prompts, and so leaving the matter here as regards the Western frontier of Burma, let 19 return to the Eastern.
In Colquhoun's Amongst the Shâns we find, p. 51, that the villagers of Zimmè paid taxes in cloth, chillies and safflower: taxes being a pretty sure indication of barter values. At p. 60 we are told that the small tribe of the Kakuis" are said to pay no taxes, but make presents of mats, cloths and other articles to the Chiefs and supply them with rice when they travel, as well as carry their baggage." In the Appendix to Vol. II. of Across Chryse there is an interesting translation of a Chinese MS. account of the Kwei-Chan Miao-tzu datod about 1730. It is practically an acconnt of various Shân tribes, and throughout it are allusions to barter values in various forms, which the following will sufficiently indicate. A tribe, therein called the Kau-erh Lang-Kia (p. 369), "after the spring-time stick a small tree in a field, which they call the Demon-stick.'55 There is a gathering around this stick and a dance, and then engagements are made and they go away. If a young woman afterwards wishes to break off her engagement she has to redeem herself by giving an ox and a horse. After this she has to use a go-between." Again, at p. 374, we are told that the Chu-si Keh-lao "always have their revenge on an enemy. If they are not strong enough they engage some one to assist them by the bribe of an ox or some wine." Although to continue the quotation is a little beyond our present point, it is so quaint that I cannot forbear: - "Those who have strength will first eat some meat and drink some wine, and then they do not mind if they are killed in the revengeful act. Those in the district of Tsing-ping are better : they have entered into an agreement with the Chinese!"
That in Siam two hundred years ago everything could be procured by barter we have interesting evidence from a complaint, noticed by Anderson, in English Intercourse toith Siam, p. 170, from the East India Company's Inspectors that copper and tin could not be bartered for in Ayathia in 1681 because of a royal monopoly in those articles. At p. 421 ff, of his excellent book Dr. Anderson gives as much as he could read of a "Report on the Trade of Siam" written in 1678 and attributed to the factor, George White, and from this we have a confirms. tion of the general nature of the barter system then prevalent in Ayathia. At p. 425, this valuable document states : -" The ships from Suratt -and Cormandell, bring cargoes of ser': sorts of Callicoes propp for y: vse of y: Countrey and Exportacou to Jepan, China and Manillalı, w: they barter for Tyon, Copp., Tutinague, and Porcellaine." In 1822 Crawfurd found the Siamese poll tax paid " in some parts of the country by a commutation in certain of the rude produce peculiar to each province, as sapan-wood, wood, of aloes, saltpetre, ivory and peltry."56
Going further East we find that acute observer, De Morga, stating (Hak. Soc. Ed. pp. 302, 324) that, among the Philipine Islanders in the later 10th Century, "their usual way of trade was by barter of one thing for another, in provisions, cloths, cattle, fowls, lands, houses, crops in the ground and slaves; also fisheries, palms, nipa trees and woods," and again that tribute was paid "in the produce which they possessed, gold, wrappers, cotton, rice, bells, fowls and the rest of what they possessed or gathered."
Lastly to shew that precisely the same ideas and customs flourish to the present day among Asiatic peoples, when circumstances and civilization permit, I quote a Russian account of Turkestan as it now is : "From this cursory examination of the natural prodactions of the
ch
84 The fines inflicted by the Expedition were, as usual, in terms of the looal currency or exchango : e. g., rice, metros (cattle), pigs, goats, and fowls (pp. 233, 299); and in the Pori, Papers on the subject passim.
65 A "sowing custom," worth reading by the Folk-lo e Society, and also as a primitive form of svonya-wvara.
56 Embassy to Siam and Cochin-China, p. 375. M. Aymonier, Voyage dans le Laos, Vol. I. p. 330, found taxes being paid in lac in 1882-3.
