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286
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1897.
returns expected, mentions that he was constantly plied with tea in cakes, 71 and, e. 9., som etimes to his great discornfiture. But the best and most instructive instance of tea currency. which has come under my observation, is from Scott's Report on the Northern Shan States for 1893, which describes an interchange of rice and ten, much on the principle of that of cotton and fish condiments already noticed between Burma and Arakan. It seems that the Sawbwa of Tawng Peng, a State next to the Ruby Mines District of Burma, got into heavy arrears of tribute in 1892 as estimated in cash, and this is how Mr. Scott describes the situation (p. 11): - "The balance he pleaded to be allowed to pay into the treasury at Mandalay on the ground that there is very little ready money available in Tawng Peng itself, where barter is much commoner than payment in rupees. The State does not grow anything approaching the quantity of rice which the people require for food. There is, therefore, an ancient rule that no caravan is allowed to enter the country for purposes of trade, which does not bring with it an amount of rice proportioned to the number of pack-animals brought up. This is exchanged for tea. Piece goods and betel come on the same terms, and the Sawbwa himself receives the great bulk of his revente in produce."72
Clement Williams, Through Burma to Western China, 1864, p. 34, has a note on tea which seems to refer to a currency in cakes of tea :--" The only kinds apparently known in the market at Bamò are the flat discs of China tea and the balls of Shân tea. The discs weigh 20 tickals each ; seven piled together make a packet which used to sell at 14 tickal and 2 ticks (sic)."
(2) Skins, in some stage or other of manufacture, are mentioned by de la Couperie (op. cit., loc. cit.) as used for currency m North America and Ancient Russia, probably alluding to the same evidence as that adduced by Ridgeway, Origin of Currency, p. 12 f. Parker, 73 in quoting the Tang History of China, thinks that the note by the Chinese writer of the 'porpoise,". as a barter currency of the Burmese a thousand years ago, probably meant porpoise skins.
This skin currency is qnite a different thing to the leather money introduced in 1241 at Faenza by the Emperor Frederic 11.74 His leather pieces were tokens pure and simple, and their currency was based on credit, which argues a state of civilisation far beyond the ideas of savages and semi-civilised beings using a natural non-metallic mediam of exchange.
(3) Cloth. - We have already seen that cloth of various kinds is used in barter by the wild Hill Tribes between Assam and Burma.75 Now, in 1775, Mr. John Jesse wrote a letter to the Court of Directors, dated July 20th, from "Borneo Proper," passages in which give us a clear and definite reference to a currency stated in cloth. “I was informed the quantity (of pepper) that year (1774) was 4,000 pecals, cultivated solely by a Colony of Chinese settled here, and sold to the junks at the rate of 172 Spanish dollars per pecul, in China cloth called congongs, which, for want of any other specie, are become the standard for regulating the price of all commercial commodities at this Port."76 A little further on he hopes to induce the hill
11 See Vol. II. p. 97, ato. In Stevenson's Bur. Dict. p. 994, there is an entry which is a curious commentary on Colquhoun's experience.. "Lab'et-tók, a small package of pickled tea, such as accompanies an invitation to an entertainment. The receipt of such a package is nowadays considered equivalent to a polite demand from the giver of a feast for a subscription.)" Colquhoun would also have appreciated the quaint remark made in a Report on the Tracle of Siam in 1678, quoted in Anderson's Siam, p. 428:-"Copp of thom whose occasions necessitate an imediate sale to negociate their Returnes, may att first arrivall bee bought for : 6: Taell: 1. Tecall p. Pec: for Cash, but at y: same time tis carr: for:8: Taell in Barter."
I would here note for the benefit of etymologists that Lane, Eng. Bur. Dict., 1841, spells the word for toalp'ak, and not lakp'ak, like his successors. The tea used was a coarse tes .... under the name of lapech (le'pet)." Sangermano, p. 169.
11 There is an enormous amount of information on the subject of tea in Watt's Dict. of Economic Products under "Camellia" and "Tea." A good note on the origin of brick-tea will be found in Vol. II. p. 75. Perbape after all the best evidence of the use of tea-bricks as money is in Baber's Report (1879) on the Chinese Tea Trade with Tibet in J. R. G. S., Supplt. Papers, 1882, p. 198:-"A brick of ordinary tea is not merely worth a rapee, but, in a certain sense, is a rupee."
13 Burma Relations with China, p. 13. 74 See Yule, Marco Polo, Vol. I. p. 384.
15 See also Soppitt, Account of the Kachari Tribes, p. 12. 16 Dalrymple, Oriental Repertory, Vol. II. p. 1 ff. : Indo-China, 1st Series, Vol. I. pp. 91 f., 25.
