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DECEMBER, 1897.] CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
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seen that whatever was meant by that Indian term is also meant by the corresponding Burmese term yroé; and laving selected a standard of Indian weights, to compare with Burmese and Further Indian weights, I will pass at once to the consideration of the Burmese weights themselves.
Js is the case all the world over, where no arbitrary legal standards exist, current bul. lion weights in Burma have always differed with time and place; a fact that must ever be borne in mind, when talking of a Barmese weight being equivalent to such and such a known English or European weight. It also accounts for the variations to be found in the statements of authorities on the subject.
The writers that I am able to consult here as to Bormese weights are those whose state. ments I compare below, and whose spellings or representations of the veruacular terms they have used I have collected at the end of this Chapter. For one of the difficulties of the subject to the enquirer is the wildness of the guesses of travellers and authors at the sounds and forms of the words they have been obliged to reduce to writing in Roman characters. In the following comparative statements I have adopted the system of verbal representation followed by myseif throughout these pages, without reference to the forms employed by the writers quoted.
An examination of the authorities will shew the enquirer that the source of most of the modern writings on this point is to be found in the elaborate statements of Latter in his Burmese Grammar of 1845, and I will here give them for that reason, but in mine, and not in his, transcription, on the grouuda just explained.
At pp. 169 ff. of his great work. Latter's list of Burmese weights runs thus: -
Measures of Weight. (1) 36 paramaņumyû are 1 anumyû (2) 36 aņumyú
I myû 36 'mů (? myû) , 1 s'mun. 36 'mun
,, 1 kañitche: (5) 7 kañitche: » 1 bànokk'aung: (6) 7 bànokk'aung , 1 moññinoze. (7) 3 monninoze. » 1 'nanze. (8) 4 'nanze,
– 1 sànze. (9) 4 sàize,
» 1 chinywe: (10) 2 chiny wê:
» 1 ywėji: (11) 4 ywėji:
1 pe: (12) 2 pe:
» 1 ma: (13) 2 mů:
, 1 mat (14) 4 mặt
, 1 kyàt (15) 5 kyat
1 bo(1) (16) 20 bô(1), or 100 kyat , 1 pêkba
In the above sixteen dénominations, the enquirer does not reach to practical matters until he gets to the ninth on the list, the chinywd, which is, as will have been seen already, the familiar Indian rati or seed of the Abrus precatorius.
Those which precede it are only useful to note for the purpose of clinching the derivation of the Burmese denominations of weight from an Indian source. For they are merely the
47 CJ. Colebrooke, Essays, Vol. II. p. 530 f.
