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110
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1902.
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1 loso
Out of this scale we get one or two very interesting facts. The dollar and five-franc piece were to the Malagasy obviously convertible terms for the same money unit. The weight of this money, as & theoretically standard coin, may be taken as 360 grs. Troy. Now the ariary or farantaa weighed 720 variraiventy or rice-seeds: therefore the lower unit of the Malagasy ponderary system was practically half a grain Troy. It was so in daily practise; thus, when a grain of quinine was required as medicine, it was weighed out by 2 pariraiventy.
Specimens of the standard loso, kirobo, sikajy and voamena, small cabes of good steel accurately made and stamped thus og have been weighed and were found to weigh as follows:
double voamena 34 grs. Troy sikajy
52 kirobo
103 loso
210 Taking these weights first as proportional parts, it will be found that they do not exactly (though they very nearly do) work oat correctly. Beginning at the bottom of the scalo we find
1 voamena should be 17 grs, and actually is 17 grs. 1 siksiy
52 1 kirobo 102
103 204
- 210 By reversing the process we find
1 logo should be 210 grs, and actually is 210 grs, 1 kirobo 105
109 1 sikajy 52 1 voamena 17
17 By the theory of the scales already explained they should run thus :
1 voamena 15 grs. 1 sikajy 45 1 kirobo 90
1 loso 180 But the actual specimens of the standard weights we have been examining are intended. to mark the difference between the weight in silver of the five-franc piece cut up and the five-franc piece uncut, for the reasons above explained. That is, they are enhanced weights: the enhancement being two voamena in the five-franc piece. Now, if we are to accept the enbancement as being intended to be 1/12th or 81%, then the enhanced voameng would weigh 15 grs. plos 11, 1. e., 16grs. : or in other words something less than the standard voamena seems to have been intended to weigh. At any rate we get thus & clear reason why the standard voamena is what we find it to be.
And this leads us to some interesting facts. The actual five-franc piece which the Malagasy cut up (or made at their mint) must have weighed 366 grs. as nearly as may be, and when cut up its weight value was enhanced by two voamena, i, e., to 32, 34 or 35 gra. So that the weight of the cut up piece was made to be 3981 to 401 grs. The Spanish dollar of commerce weighs 401 grs., and we thus see why it was that ariary was the term usually employed for the cut up dollar, while farantas stood for the uncut piece. And we further see the reason for the particalar enhancement ordered by the Native Government. It
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