________________
APRIL, 1899.]
DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENCY IN THE FAR EAST.
as a brush is of bristles. In the first place, in order to make clear the inductive argument I am bound now to follow, I have to take him over the Far East the wrong way round, historically speaking, viz., into Burma, Siam, and Shan-land, then into China, Cambodia, Annam, Tongking, and Cochin-China generally, and thence, through Malay-land to the Far-Eastern International Commercial Community of the present day.
The modern popular Burmese Troy weight system, in its existing forms, does not suggest anything Indian, and it is only by examination that its unquestionable identity with the Indian literary scale comes out. To begin with, all the terms are purely Burmese, and the scale runs thus :
2 ywe 4 ywêji
2 pè
2 mû
4 mat (128 ywê)
5 kyat
640 ywe 820 ywêjt
4 ywêjt 2 pè
2 mú
4 mat
5 kyat
:::::
!! ⠀⠀⠀⠀
Burmese.
DIAGRAM I.
Now, the yué is the abrus seed, and the yueji, or great ywe, is the adenanthera seed, the latter, you observe, being double of the former. But this does not help us, because, it will have been seen, 128 ywé make a kydt, and the kydt represents neither the told nor the pala. However, there happens to be the further denomination, now practically obsolete, but constantly occurring in the older books, called the bol. Five kyat made a ból, and therefore 640 ywe ran to a ból. Here the sweet confusion of the two standard seeds, already explained, comes into play, for the Burmese, in taking over the Indian literary scale bodily, as it can be otherwise shown that they did, confused the actual and the conventional raktiká, and therefore all their Troy statements must be cut down by half, and thus 820 yuré make a bôl. In other words the bol is the same thing as the pala, as an upper Troy weight. There is no doubt whatever that this is so, and, moreover, it can be clearly shown that ból is etymologically the form that the Indian word pala would properly assume on being adopted into the Burmese language,
So here we have the link we are seeking to show that the Indian literary scale of 320 raktikás to the pala spread over the Indian borders among the peoples further East possessed of the Indo-Chinese civilization. I ask this point, too, to be borne in mind, for it is another fundamental point in the argument.
make 1 ywêjl or great ywê make 1 pè
make 1 mú
make 1 måt
make 1 kyat or tickal make 1 böl
I now ask the reador to step over for a moment into Siam and Shan-land. Here we have as much confusion in terminology and presentment of fact as before, bat, as the outcome of a very long inquiry, I am able to present a comparative table, on which I may fairly ask him to rely, of the Burmese and Siamese Troy weight systems, thus:
DIAGRAM II.
make 1 pè make 1 mû make 1 måt make 1 kyat
... make 1 böl
105
5 hüng 2 pê
2 flang
4 salung
4 båt
Siamese-Cambodian.
...
**
make 1 pé
... make 1 füang ... make 1 salung ... make 1 bât
... make 1 tàmlüng
320
320
Now, I wish to draw attention here to the following special points. Firstly, though the terminology and the subdivisions differ entirely, the fundamental fact remains, that the upper
