Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 117

APRIL, 1913.)
THE OBSOLETE MALAY TIN CURRENCY
113
Another quotation derived from Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 8. o. kopek, gives a history for this currency of Russia curiously analogous to that in Malay-land. Yule quotes Chaudoir, Aperçu sur les Monnaies Russes :-"It was on this that the Grand Duchess Helena, mother of Ivan Vasilievitch, and regent in his minority, ordered in 1585, that these dengui should be molted down and new ones struck, at the rate of 300 dengui or 3 roubles of Moscow à la griven ka in kopek ... From that time socounts continued to be kept in rouble, kopek and dengui." The kopek is the hundredth part of a rouble and therefore half a cent, or 200 to the doller, or 2 dengy, which commences the scale of 400 to the dollar eren more closely in the Malay style than the scale just shown :-2 quarter cents (denga)=one half cent and so on. The story is carriel on into modern times30 with an illuminating double scale, as in India and the Far East : one of account in kopel, 100 to the rouble, with halves (denushka) and quarters (polushka), 800 (cash : polushka) t the dollar ; the other with 10 griepen (also writtea grievener) and 33 altin to the roulle of money, or in other words with a survival in terminology of the old scale of 400 cash to the dollar.
3 The analogy between the European and Oriental scales does not rest here, and as a matter of inct the alternative souls of 1000-1280 cash to the upper unit found in Malay-land must have been quite familiar to both the Portuguese and Dutoh traders to the Malay Archipelago, as in those times exactly similar relations prevailel in their own respetive countries.30 Thns, in Portugal itself the old soal, ran then :31 20 reis
make
1 vintem. 5 vintem
1 teston. 4 teston
1 (old) crasado. 2 crasndo
1 milrei. 1000 reis to the milrei (dollar). Whilst the actual figure of 1280 to the dollar unit or its half, 640"(exactly as in Malay-land) was then found in Germany. Thus3? :(Liege, then in Germany).
Vienna. 4 pfening m ake liard
2 heller make
1 pfening 4 liard
1 stiver 3 pfening
1 grosobel 10 stiver
1 escalin 1 groschel
1 kreutzer 2 escalin
1 florin 3 kreutzer
1 groschen 4 florin 1 patson (dollar) 2 groschen
1 schilling 54 schilling
1 rixguiden 1280 pfening to the dollar.
2 rixgalden
1 rixdollar
C40 beller to tha dollar. so Kelly, Universal Cambist, 1835, I., 299.
340 That this was the fact, so far as the Portuguese were concerned, is proved beyond doubt by the following qitation from the Commentaries of Albuquerque, Vol. III. pp. 771., Hak. Soc., Ed. "This King Xaquendarza [Sikandar Shab of Malacca).... desired to see the King of China ....so be set out from Malaca, taking with him a present for the King of China .... became his Taal .... and obtained permiwion to coin small money of pewter, which money be ordered to be made as soon as he reached Malacs; and to it he gave the name of caixes, which are like our ceitils, and a hundrad of them go to the calaim, and each calaim was worth, scoording to the appointed law, eleven reis and four celtils. Silrer and gold was not made into money, but only used by way of marchandise." From this statement we get the fact that the Malay cash was recognised by the Portuguese » analogous to their own ceitil, an obsolete coin, wbioh Birob shows, in a note to p. 78, ran 6 or 7 (the above quotation makes it c. ep) to the rei, or 6000 to 7000 to the silver dollar. Albuquerqne's story gives incidentally traditional date for tho introduction of cash into Malay-land, as Sikandar Shah visited China in 1411, (op. cit., p. 81n., 9, Yule, Marco Polo, 2nd Ed., pp. 263 ).
Kelly, Universal Cambiat, I., 280. 32 Op. cit., pp. 209, 319.