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CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
These old gifts compare with the modern ones quoted as being recorded on stone by Forchhammer, thus:
MAY, 1898.]
(1) 1848 A. D. Exchange taken at Rs. 9 to the £.
(a) Rs. 100 (6) Rs. 350
£11, £39.
(2) 1866-7 A. D. Exchange taken at Rs. 10 to the E
(a) Rs. 460 (b) Rs. 400 (c) Rs. 145
=
£46.
£40.
£14.5.
119
(3) 1879 A. D. Exchange taken at Rs. 12 to the £
Rs. 15,000
£1,250.
The calculation of the pó or bo(1) of the Mahajanaka Jataka may be regarded from two points of view: first, that of the monkish translator, and secondly, that of the Pali original of the story.
According to the monk's quaint conjectures, which would also, from Taw Sein Ko's remarks, appear to coincide with the orthodox Burmese view, the po, bó (1), phala, at the time of the Jataka, equalled 25 tickals. Then, 100 phalas of gold 2,500 tickals = 25 viss = 90-25 lbs. Av., as the weight of the gold salver. No wonder the good old monk felt bound to justify his computation by an allusion to a belief held by his Buddhist readers to be true, because contained in Scripture. Had he taken the weight of the po at its contemporaneous current computation of 5 tickals, the gold salver would even then have weighed 18-05 lbs. Av., value £1,110. Quite enough both for weight and value.
The story being a Játaka, one has to go back to ancient computations of the phala to get at a notion of the idea that was in the mind of the originator of the story, when he talked of a golden salver weighing 100 phalas.
=
Taking the rati at the average double rate of ancient commerce of about 4 grs. Troy and the phala as 320 ratis, we get an average phala of 1,280 grs. = 23 oz. Troy. Then, for such a calculation as the present, 100 phalas 266 oz. Troy 22.16 lbs. Troy 17-73 lbs. Av. And if we accept Colebrooke's estimate of about 4 grs. for the double rati, which makes, by the way, the persistent South-Indian pala (palam) of 1,440 grs., then the phala 3 oz. Troy. Then also 100 phalas 300 oz. Troy 25 lbs. Troy 20 lbs. Av. So that the salver was probably imagined by those who first told and heard the story as weighing what would be now described as a weight of between 17 and 20 lbs. Av., or to put it in modern Indian phrase as between 8 and 10 pakka sérs, or in modern Burmese phrase as between 5 and 6 viss.
Now 100 phalas make 1 tuli, and so we get a statement of the ancient tula as being of 20 lbs. Av., or of the modern average South-Indian maund. However that may be, for arriving at an idea of the weight of King Dhammachêti's bell at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the best plan that suggests itself to me, as a result of the study of South-Indian weights given ante, pp. 57 ff., is to assume that the Pali scholars of Burma in at any rate the 15th century A. D. and onwards have meant by the tula what is now known as the Madras maund of 25 lbs. Av. Just as the Burmans and Talaings unquestionably borrowed the SouthIndian viss in an approximately correct form, so did they also, I think, borrow the next higher Avoirdupois denomination, the South-Indian tulám, man or maund. And that these synonymous terms have meant continuously a weight of 25 lbs. Av. or thereabouts in, before and after the 15th century A. D. there can be no doubt.
