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JUNE, 1898.)
CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
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not bear examination. The Burmese have the usual Oriental notions about the guardians of each day, which are popularly stated as follows:
Sunday, galón (kaļòn, garuda). Monday, châ: (kyde, tiger). Tuesday, chine (mythical, lion). Wednesday, s'in (elephant). Thursday, pú: (guinea-pig). Friday, chut (rat).
Saturday, tá or nagd (mythical, lion or serpent, ndga).54 But so far as my notes go King Mindon Min was born on a Tuesday, chine ruling, and Thibaw was born on a Saturday, tô: ruling. Now, as they both adopted the hinda as their weight form, it seems obvious that they could not have been guided in their choice by the ruling spirits of their respective birthdays.
Another view of the origin of the standard weight forms is stated in the quotations above given, viz., that they represented the national cognisance, but this again, though it has the support of Latter, op. cit., loc. cit., Phayre, Coinn of Arakan, etc., Int. Num. Or., Vol. III. p. 31, and Stevenson, Bur. Dict., 8. v., is to my mind open to doubt. E. g., they all say that the hanst is the cognisance of the Peguan Kingdom, and one has strong doubts as to any King of Burma Proper ever having allowed a Peguan national coguisance to become the cognisance of Burma also. I observe, too, that Latter saya in 1846, temp. King Darawadi, that the Burmese national cognisance was the tôl. It may have been so then, bat at Mandalay it was certainly not so under Kings Mindôn and Thibaw, 1852-85. At that period, beyond any doubt, the royal cognisance was two-fold, the peacock and the hare, to emphasize the mythical claim of the Alompra Dynasty to both solar and lunar (Indian) descent. All over the palace, especially on either side of the throne itself, 56 – everywhere in fact where it could be intruded, -it was to be seen; and it was on the coins also, as will be perceived later on.57
9.
Minor Tongues.
It will have become obvious to those who have followed the argument so far, that the further one dives into the dialects of the Far East and the closer is one's acquaintance with
& The whole question of naming children, ruling animals of the days of the wock, etc., is very well explained in Scott's Tho Burinan, Vol. I., opening Chapter. The custom is distinctly Indian, vide my Proper Numes oj the Panjabir, Ch. VII.
51 A man's birthday guardian animal can be tested by the shape of the candles he offers at the Pagodas. A complete set of these, moulds and all, have been given by the present writer to the Oxford Museum. There is one for every day of the week in the conventional image of the ruling animal and the custom is to present candles in the form of one's birthday guardian. Soe Scott, The Darman, Vol. I. P. 6.
65 Though both are nowadays generally called " lions," the chix84, the ordinary guardian of the road to a pagoda or other sacred placo, is, in my belief, the remoto descendant of the Assyrian winged lion, and the ts of the Assyrian winged bull. The Barmans do not seere to know the lion at all, for when a ycung lion and lioness were purchased for the Zoological Gardens at Rangoon in 1890 tho Burinese visitors declined to believe that they were anything but European dogs!
06 Until a mischievous hand destroyed one of the emblems in 1888.
67 It was adopted by the Upper Burma Volunteer Rifles for their buttons, which caused the ribald to say, most untruly, however, that they were as proud as peacocks and as timid as haros. To give an idea of the ordinary Burman's view of the symbols, I may say that when a Burman convict was told to carve two door panels for Govern. ment House, Port Blair, being left to himself for the design, he carved a peacock on oue aud hare on the other, precisely as he would have done in the same circumstances for the King of Barma. That was his idea as to what was appropriate to the dwelling of the highest personage in the land,
