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328
THE INDIAN ANTIQUART.
[DECEMBER, 1897.
The above practically accurate statement was put forward about 35 years before Stevens' formal Guide to the East India Trade was published in 1775, and gives us, as will be seen, a much better and more intelligible idea of the currency of those days in Pegu. Stevens' table. for Pegu is as follows:
100 moo are 1 tual
100 tual, 1 vis or 3 lbs. 5 ozs. 5 drs. Av.
150 vis, 1 candy87 or 500 lbs.
There is a considerable mixing up of matters here. In the first place tual is obviously a misprint for "tical," and I fancy "100 mi 1 tual" should be read, therefore, 10 mû.
There can be no doubt as to the misprint of tual for tical, because lower down on the same page Stevens has, with other misprints or misreadings, for Siamese weights "80 tual are 1 catty, 50 catties 1 pecul," and later on in this Chapter it will be shewn that the Siamese and Burmese tickals are the same thing, 80 Siamese tickals going to the Siamese catty and 50 Siamese catties to the picul.
At p. 88 of the same work, we find "1 Rix dollar is 480 Copper Pegue Pettys," a statement which is at first sight a great puzzle, because in Stevens' time there was no copper money or currency in Burma proper or in Pegu. But from p. 129 we can get at an explanation. Here Stevens gives a general table of the "Sterling value of Asiatic Coins," and for "Siam, Pegu, Malacca, Cambodia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, etc.," gives a queer commercial mixture of Indo-European coined currency, Spanish, French, Dutch, Malay, and what not. In the course of this table, he says "a rial 2 Ticals 5s. a Tutalss 500 Fettees 2s. 6d." As will be seen later on, Malay terms were constantly applied by travellers in describing Siamese commercial matters, and fettee and petty are no doubt meant for pitis or pichis, the small copper, brass or tin money of Java and the Malays, when first seen by Europeans.99
Cox, in the Asiatic Researches, Vol. VI. p. 134, in an "Account of the Petroleum Wells90 of the Burmha Dominion, extracted from the Journal of a Voyage from Ranghong (Rangoon). up the River Erai-Wuddy (Irrawaddy) to Amarapoorah, 1797," gives us in his own unique manner a new form for a Burmese weight. First, p. 133, he tells us that the price of the oil at the wells was "at the rate of one and a quarter tecals per hundred viss," and then, p. 134, that the four workmen's share at each well" will be 2,250 viss per month of thirty days, or in money at the above price, 28 tecals 50 avas, or 7 tecals 12 avas each man per month." One is nearly certain that by ava is meant ywê, as 120 to 128 ywés go to the tickal and no other denomination could go as far as 50 to the tickal, as in Cox's statement; but one cannot prove the fact by calculations, as the figures are too loosely stated. Thus, 7 t. 12 a. are not a quarter of 28 t. 50 a., as Cox gives the figures, and the sam 2,250 viss at 11. per 100 viss results in 28 1/8 tickals; therefore, if 50 avas = 1/8 tickal, one tickal must equal 400 avas, which is impossible if avas are really ywês.
,91 and
Symes, Ava, p. 326, gives us for the weight of the tickal or "kiat" 10 dwts. 10 grs., 9: the now familiar quaternary scale of 16 pè and 8 mû to the tickal. But he comes to grief over the name of the pè, for he writes it "tubbee," i. e., tab or "one pè." But Wilson, Documents of the Burmese War, quoting in the Appx. p. lxi., the Government Gazette, March 2, 1826, comes to much farther grief in the same direction, though his quaternary scale is right enough. His table is worth giving here verbatim :
87 I. e., khindi, see Prinsep's Useful Tables, p. 115.
88 A misprint, one is almost certain, for "tical," as a tical was then always valued at 2s. 6d.
69 Crawford, Malay Dict., 8.v. The word travelled far, for Stevens, Guide, p. 125, mentions that Chinese cash are called petties"; cf. also Lockyer, Trade in India, p. 141. Alexander Hamilton, East Indies, Vol. II., Appx.. 1. 10. 99 At Rainanghong, i. e., Yênànjaung.
91 Alexander, Travels, speaking loosely of Rangoon, in 1825-6, calls the tickal, or dingá, nearly the weight of a Madras rupee.
