________________
DECEMBER, 1897.] CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
327
This table he follows up with remarks so much to the present point that I here give them in full in his spelling of the vernacular words :-." The small rwé (ywe) here is named the Arbrus (sic) precatorius, and the larger bean that of the Adenanthera pavonina. The kyat is the weight which we have called the tical, and the paiktha is our vis. I believe both words are corruptions borrowed from the Mohammedan merchants of India, sojoarning in the Burman country. The origin of the word tical I have not been able to ascertain. That of the other is sufficiently curious. The p and v are commutable consonants. The Mohammedan sojourners cannot pronounco the th of the Burmese, and always substitute an s for it. The k is mute even in the Barman pronunciation, and the final a is omitted by Europeans only. Thus we have the word paiktha (pêkb) commuted into vis. This measure is equal to 3.65 lbs. A voirdupois.' Except that vis (viss) is the origin of pékbd and not vice versa, Crawford has exactly hit apon the mutual connection of the two words.
From the American Missionary, Malcom's Travels, Vol. I. p. 275, 1839, we find that he was a precursor of Latter, and I think that Latter has read his book. Ho gives us the following useful little table :--
2 ywe are 1 ywêji, or 1 pice 4 ywêji, i pè or ywêal , 1 anna 2 pd „1 mů ,, 2 annas 2 mu , 1 mat , 4 annas 4 måt , I kyat , 1 tickal
100 kyat ., 1 pokba , 1 viss He also tells us that the small ywą" is the seed of the Abrus precatorius, "called in America, crab's eye," and the ywêji the seed of the Adenanthera pavonina; and that the màt is 62) gra. Troy, and the viss 3.65 lbs. Av. Farther he says thnt "the late experiments at the Calcutta Mint32 determined the tickal to be 252 grs, Troy and "to weigh exactly one cubie inch of distilled water at the temperature of 90°,193
This last remark takes as to Prinsep and the famous assay of the Ava bullion of 1826. Prinsep's table, given by Burney from Ava, is on the decimal scale : 4
2 po are 1 mů 24 mů , 1 måt 2 mat, a k'w485
2 k'wès, 1 kyàt or tickal
100 kyat , 1 pêkba or viss, or precisely 140 tálás. At p. 98 of his Useful Tables, Prinsep quotes Kelly's Cambist, p. 222, that the “Pegu tickal" equals 1.138 tslás, which hardly agrees with the statement just given, as it would make the viss equal 113 4/5 tolás.
As to times before accurate knowledge was possible we find in Alexander Hamilton's "Table of Weights, etc.," attached to his East Indies, Vol. II. Appx., p. 8, the following information regarding "Pegu Weight":
"1 Viece is 39 Oa. Troy, or 1 Viece 10C Teculs 140 Viece a Bahaar The Bahaar , 3 Peculs China"
81 Here is a further confusion in the use of the term yw : 800 Latter's statement, ante, p. 320. 82 H. H, Wilson's. See Prinsep's Useful Tables, p. 36 85 Cooke says 60, vide p. 324, rupra. #4 Page 34, Useful Tables, Thomas' Ed.
# See ante, p. 325, used really for "a half more," but not as "a hillf" in this nense, though we is used for "half a tin (basket)."
#6 This is not a correct statement idiomatically,
