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DECEMBER, 1997.] CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
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and that the ngámi or half kyàt is also called k'wè: 68 and a piece of money tabya:. What he precisely means by "1 tula," or "1 toolah " as he writes it, and "1 tapôn" and " 1 tasů ” I have not discovered, unless he means by tula the Pali and Sanskrit tula, the weight denomination equal to 100 palas or phalas. As Mr. Scott's tulá is equal to 80 of Latter's 66(1): (palas), it may be the same thing. Bat his tapôn and tasú are a puzzle :- combined or singly they might mean simply " a hoard." 89
It will have been seen that in all the tables for Indian gold and silver weights, selected for comparison, the scales worked out to 320 jeweller's raktik&s,70 i. e., twice that number of seeds of the Abrus precatorius, or 640 seeds, to the pala. In Burma of course it is the quaternary scalo that we must use for the purpose of comparison, and we find that it runs thus, according to the chief authority, Latter -
8 ywê are 1 pe 2 pè l' mů 2 mû, 1 màt 4 mát , 1 kyết
5 kyàt , 1 bo(1) Therefore there are 840 ywd, or seeds of the Abrus procatorius to the bo(1), which consequently represents the pala in practice, and I propose now to show that bo(1) equals pala by etymology. Therefore also the Burmese scale can be stated in terms of the ordinary Indian scale on the assumption of a common origin.
Bo(l) may be stated to be merely a modern pronunciation of the Sanskrit pala, Pali phala, on the following grounds. The Burmese, in adopting Sanskrit and Pali words into their language for every day use, clip them sufficiently to make them fit in with their ideas of pbonetics, and during this process the long Sanskrit and Pali forms nearly always lose all or some part of their final syllables. Thus, the first step towards adopting pala into Burmese would be the docking of the final a and leaving a monosyllable pal. The final l is silent in Burmese pronun. ciation, though in such a case it would be retained in the script. The matter, therefore, to concern us is the change of a into 0.
In Vols. XXI., XXII., and XXIII. of the Indian Antiquary, there took place a controversy on Sanskrit words in Burmese, in which the present writer took a small part. In the course of that controversy the following facts were disclosed - Burmese.
Sanskrit.
Pali. Form,
Sound.
Jô
..
(irôh
Graha ...
Gaba Mikkaso
Myê"kabo ... Mrigasiras ... Migasira Saugroh Dinjô . ... Saugraha ...
Sangaha Sisakrôm Wibàjó Visvakarma
Vissakamma Mogh Mô ... . Megha ... ..
Mêgha Môr M6 ... ...
Méru ... ... Méru Rajagrô ... ...
Yazajô ... .. Râjagļiha ... ... Rajaghara 8 Properly " half more," like the Indian ard: e. 9., 'na'cha' k'wes, 2 kyat and a hall, On applying to Mr. Scott, he courteously informed me that he could not, in 1897, remember where he got the information he recorded in 1881.
OP If, however, Mr. Scott's informant should have told him " 4 kyât = 1 tull and 4,000 kyat-1 tapón," then the ta becomes the catty and the tapon the picul (Siamese), and the expressions become intelligible, hecause in that case the full would equal the chany, and both words mean "a balance;" also the weighta thus arrived at would take their proper place in the general scale for the Far East. See next section on "Siamese Weights."
10 Browne, Thayetmyo, p. 60, already quoted, is very distinct on this point for he says "two moo-gyees one mat: four pai-gyees make ono moo-gyee, and four rwe-gyees make one moo-gyee," using thus the "double" wcale throughout,
11 Vol. XXI. pp. 91 ff., 193 f., Vol. XXII. pp. 24 ff., 162 4.; Vol. XXIII. pp. 135 ff., 193.
