Indian Antiquary Vol 27

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 94

90
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1898.
The tables just given appear at the first glance to contain merely a hopeless maddle of facts, but the more closely they are studied in the light of the facts elicited from the Lilávati, the Ain Akbari, and the Muhammadan Indian coinage, and of the existing Indian scales, the more clearly do they appear to me to prove that the existing Indian scales are the direct descendants of that popular Indian scale of 98 ratis to the told already described : and that, too, despite the queer diction of travellers and traders, and the varions dates and places at which they recorded their observations for three and four centuries and more. The existing scales are, moreover, substantially what they were in the days of the early Muhammadan conquerors.
These tables therefore confirm the conclusion that the general South Indian scale must be referred to the popular scale of 96 ratis to the tôla and not to what I have called the old Indian literary scale of 320 raktikás to the pala. But, as may be seen from the preceding sections of this Chapter, it is this very literary scale of 820 raktikas to the pals that became extended to the Far East.
Now, however conventional and unreal the literary scale may have become by the XIIth Century A. D., it must have been real enough at some time previously, and no doubt it spread to the Far East whilst it was a practical method of computation - say, at some period long anterior to the XIIth Century. The general inference from this argument is that the Far Eastern scales, as we find them now, have been adopted from India at time when the old literary scale of 320 raktikds to the pala was still in practical use, which time was anterior to the adoption in India of the popular scale of 96 ratis to the tôla.
How old the Indian popular scale is, or when the Indian literary scale spread Eastwards, I do not pretend to discuss here, but I would point out that the ancient Chinese scale, as opposed to the existing decimal scale, seems to bear some reference to the popular scale. Thus, taking the ratí to be half the candareen and the candareen to be the old Chinese chu, we get :
Indian Popular scale.
Lilâvati Popular scale.
Ancient Chinese scale.
...
cho
rati ... 8 masha
guñja (rati) 3 valla
...
6 hwa 2 che 2 liang
8 dharana ... ... 2 gadyânaka... (2 tôla, see ante, p. 62)
4 tánk... 3 tôla ...
2 kin
96
48 (=96 rati)
Taking the tôla to have been actually 174-180 grs., the kin c. 195 grs., and the tickal c. 225 grs. Troy, .we get at the actual relative values which the upper Troy denominations assumed ; and this places the ancient kin between the modern tola and tickal. So far as I can gather, in modern India the old general upper Troy denomination has become assimilated to the tôla and in Indo-China to the tickal.
There is also a curious coinage in Nepal, which has long had a great vogue far into Central Asia, through Tibetan trade, the weights of which should apparently, and, in view of what will be later on explained as to the Manipuri coinage and Troy scales, almost certainly,
Ante, p. 30, and the argument in the Section on Chinese weighte.