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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1897.
the Ming Dynasty, Bk. 325, we find that " King Maraja Kala of Puni" (West Coast of Borneo) went to Fukien in 1408, and seems to have died there. He was succeeded by his son HiaWang (Chinese title), and to him on his departure was given paper money amongst other things. Again in 1411 the King of Malacca, situated at the South of Champa (Cambodia)," visited the Emperor, and " on the moment of starting" back again, he received, among other things, "400,000 kwan of paper money."5
The above and other similar quotations, which might be extracted from the Chinese annals, may explain an otherwise inexplicable statement in Bock, Temples and Elephants, p. 399, who there tells us, in his description of the Siamese Exhibition held at Bangkok in 1882, that there was a "show of ancient coins, some flat and some spherical, solid bars of silver and gold with a stamp at one end, side by side with old paper currency, lead, crockery and porcelain tokens, and cowries."
It may, however, be possible that a paper currency has been long established in Siam, for we read in Bowring, Siam, Vol. I. p. 257:-"The Government issues (in 1855) promissory notes of various amounts, even to one-eighth of a tical. They do not seem to be extensively current, and, I believe, have not experienced any depreciation."
I must conclude this long disquisition on barter and the like by a quotation from Nicolò Conti, who travelled in the East between 1419 and 1444. In answer to Poggio's questions, as recorded in the Historia de Varietate Fortvnae, he gave, among other things, a remarkable account of the currencies he encountered "in India"; but in reality he must have spoken also from what he had heard or seen in China and Indo-China, for he had, in the course of his many peregrinations, "arrived at a river larger than the Ganges, which is called by the inhabitants Dava" and "at a city more noble than all the others, called Ava, the circumference of which is fifteen miles." In his account he wanders over the whole range of civilised currency, as he found it in the East, in a confused and discursive, but withal most quaint and instructive manner." "Some regions have no money, but use instead stones which we call cats' eyes. In other parts their money consists of pieces of iron, worked into the form of large needles. In others the medium of exchange consists of cards inscribed with the name of the king. In some parts again of interior India, Venetian ducats are in circulation. Some have golden coins, weighing more than double of our (Italian) florin, and also less, and, moreover, silver and brass money." To shew, however, that he mixed up India, China and Indo-China in this account, he follows it up in the same paragraph by saying: :-"They do not write as we or the Jews do, from left to right or right to left, but perpendicularly, carrying the line from the top to the bottom of the page (Chinese). There are many languages and dialects in use among the Indians. They have a vast number of slaves, and the debtor who is insolvent is everywhere adjudged to be the property of his creditor (Siam)." 8
(To be continued.)
Indo-China, 2nd Series, Voi. I. pp. 233, 249. For an account of Chinese intercourse with Siam, see Bowring, Siam, Vol. I. p. 172 ff. India in XVth Century, Vol. II. p. 11. For the River Dava read d'Ava. Op. cit. p. 30 f. There are two exceedingly interesting cases of paper money introduced, one temporarily by a British official, and one by a private Englishman, in modern times among the Oriental Islands.
In 1861 there was introduced into the Andaman Islands a token currency in copper, which lasted till 1870, being abandoned as a failure, chiefly on the Inspection Report of Nelson Davies of 1867; vide Vol. Lpp. 18, 28, 62: Vol. II. pp. 49, 245. The communications between the Andamans and India was then intermittent and infrequent, and in 1867 there was introduced temporarily on 8th July, 1867, a paper card token by Col. Ford, the Superintendent of the Penal Settlement at Port Blair, owing to the supply of copper tokens running short, while waiting for the fresh supply ordered from Calcutta. These card tokens ran till the 26th October, 1867. They were printed on both sides as follows:- Obv.-"Superintendent's Office. 1 Royal Arms, as then used in the Settlement, crossed diagonally by signature in facsimile B. Ford.' 1 Port Blair." I Rev. "Value one rupee in the Port Blair Treasury. I Number in blue ink."
In the Cocos-Keeling Islands, the property of the Ross family, the currency "is a parchment currency, convertible at a fixed ratio into rupees or dollars, when an Islander makes a rare visit to Batavia or Singapore, or when a Bantanese cooly leaves the Islands to return home." Sat. Review, 29th May, 1897, p. 599, quoting a blue-book Papers Relating to the Cocos-Keeling and Christmas Islands.
