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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1899.
that, it is this very relic of savagery, this memorial of early attempts to meet the necessities of primitive fiscal conditions, that lived on into the highly civilized gold coinage and currency of the great Emperor Akbar, which was itself based on the Indian popular scale of 96 ratis to the tôlá.
But I have kept to the last the best instance of the ground covered by the Indian popular scale in about the least likely place, at first sight, for its occurrence - Ancient China. The case is here based on the badly presented and somewhat, I think, undeservedly discredited researches of my late friend, Terrien de Lacou perie. However, as he has never touched upon the points I am now urging, it is I, and not he, that should be held responsible for what follows.
Terrien de Lacouperie shows, in his cloudy pages, that up to the seventh century A. D. at any rate, and partially up to several centuries later, the old Chinese had a popular scale, which, though it can be compared with the Indian, is, like the Indian, not recognised in the classics. Bat because this scale contains terms still in ase in a very different sense, I wish to mention that I am now speaking of Ancient China only. Thus:
DIAGRAM IV. Early Indian Popular Scale
Ancient Chinese Popular Scale. (Muhammadan Form). 8 ratf ... ... ... nake i misha6 chu
.. .make 1 hwa 4 mdaha ... ... make 1 tank 9 hwa
... ... ... make i che 3 tank ... ... ... make 1 tola 2 che...
... make 1 liang 2 lång
... make 1 kin
Now, the chu is the conventional adenanthera seed, or, roughly, double the rati. and therefore the old kin must have represented the tóla. I bave already, and perbaps erroneously, worked out the old kin to be the Indo-Chinese tickal, which belongs properly to the Indian literary scale. As a matter of practical fact, the kin was actually between the toll and the tickal; thus, taking common standards, the told is 180 grains, the kin is 195 grains, and the tickal is 225 grains. However this may be, the great fact remains that the Ancient Chinese, even up to medieval times, had a popular Troy scale closely allied to the Indian and directly comparable with it. It is easy to perceive that, since the Indian popular scale is partly due to Greek influence, this consideration opens up a long vista for speculation and inquiry.
Of course, all the world knows that what I have thus described is not the case now, and that the Chinese bave for centuries had a decimal scale. This scale seems to have arisen as a convenient way of enumerating the paper currency established in China between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, A. D. It was, under the Mongols in the thirteenth century, of paramount importance and in universal use, and after centuries of confusing struggle, it suppressed the old and popular scale. I put it forward, as & sopposition based on their terminology, that the decimal divisions of the notes were transferred to a new use from the old decimal divisions of the Mongol Army.
I thus speak of this fresh scale, because it is going to give trouble. Chinese trade influence has made itself felt clearly all over the Far East, all over Indo-China and Malay. land. It has become paramount in Tongking, Annam and Cochin-China. It has fought hard in the Philippines and in the Sula Archipelago with many another influence to good purpose. It has made itself felt in the Malay Archipelago and Peninsula, and has strongly affected
Ante, Vol. IXVII. p. 99 f.
