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Aperc, 1893.] DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENCY IN THE FAR EAST.
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Burma and Siam. And the result has been that the comprehension of the existing Far Eastern scales is not quite so easy as it might appear from my former remarks. For I regret to say, that wherever one goes, one has to face the more or less plain existence of two concurrent scales : the local variety of the Indian literary, and the local conception of the Chinese decimal. The less plain the fact, the more puzzling the phenomena always are, and in any case it causes confusion where, indeed, very little is to be desired. Its troublesome presence exists, however, everywhere. In Siam it pleasantly makes the same term half of itself, according to the scale used: in Malay-land it has had the effect of making traders, skippers and travellers, having no doubt clear conceptions of their meaning in their own minds, but not much vernacular knowledge, cheerfully adopt the terms of one scale while using the other: in Burma it has played a kind of practical joke and confused everyone, natives and foreigners. Thus, having carefully learnt that the equivalent of 16 annas makes a kyàt or rupee, and that 2 annas make a mí, one uaturally expects that half a rupee, i. e., 8 annas, would equal 4 ma. But it does not : it equals 5. So also 10 annas equal 6 and not 5 mí. The little difficulty thus created with 12 andas, which should properly equal 6 mú, is got over by calling them 3 måt or quarters, which is correct. Now, all this is not playing the fool on the part of a whole nation. It merely means first, that the Burmese populace has adapted its Troy scale to the British Indian coinage now current, and next, not being brilliantly endowed with mathematical skill, that it has mixed up the scale borrowed from India with that borrowed from China, In the former 8 mil, and in the latter 10 mú, made a kyàt. Thus, in order to face new conditions, the Burmans went straight over from the Indian literary to the Indian popular scale, while adhering to the terminology adopted for the former. In like fashion also, in his gold coinage, the late King, Mindon Min, of Burma, adopted the British-Indian standards, while adhering to the partial decimal system adapted from China. These were both practical measures easily taken, but they caused myself at any rate, a vast deal of inquiry.
The last matter connected with our subject to be seriously affected by Chinese influence was the Far Eastern international commercial scale. This, as I have already said, was in origin Malay, and in the earliest instances in, which it comes to light, it is purely Malay in form, too. It is, however, almost as early found current in Chinese form; then the two forms are found for centuries concurrent, till at last the Chinese form has conquered. Where the two forms differ and agree can be seen thus :
DIAGRAM V.
INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL SCALE. Old Malay Form.
Chinese Decimal Form. 5 candareens ... make 1 mace
10 candereens... make 1 mace 16 mace ... ... make 1 tael
10 mace... ... make 1 tael 20 tael ... ... make 1 catty (1600)
16 tael ... ... make 1 catty (1600) . 100 catties ... make 1 picul
100 catties ... make 1 picul Thus it was that the old merchants met the varying conditions they found around them in their own rough-and-ready, but most effective, fashion. But the scale shows a further interest ing fact. They found that the tael was not only the upper Troy weight, but also roughly the ounce avoirdupois, as they used to call it ; so they boldly made 16 tael go to the catty, or pound avoirdupois, and 100 catties go to the picul, i. e., the hundred weight or quintal. And thus did they arrive at what they wanted to get at - a standard weight system of reference for the Far East practically on all fours with their own familiar standards of the West.
I have now performed the main task before me in this article, and to meet criticism that while my title promises & talk about currency I have written about Troy weight, I must repeat that emphatically the Far Eastern peoples have never separated either the ideas or the denominations of Troy weight and money of account, i. e., of currency. They have gone, indeed, much further, for every such coinage as they have produced has merely been
