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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(APRIL, 1918.
Tin was adopted for the purposes of currency as being the staple metallic product of the Peninsula, and the system of tin currency devised by the Malays has not materially varied in historical times.
The solid animal "ingot tin currency arose out of an attempt to improve the regnlatioa of the solid ingot currency by giving it readily recognisable forms, which could be made to conform to definite standards; while the forms themselves ware copied from those in use with a very long history behind them-by the neighbouring countries carrying on the external trade, which were mainly Burma and China (directly or through Siam).
In regard to the weight standards of the countries trading with the Peninsula, I have shown, ante, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 102 ff., that the ponderary (Troy ) scales in use in the whole of the Far East wore originally based on that of ancient India, which in its turn was connected with that of ancient Greece ;61 that the terminology of the international commercial ponderary scales east of India is Malayan with a partly Indian basis; that the standards of weight for metallic currency spread eastward from India ; that the basis of the standard was the seed of the abrue precatorius creeper (rali, rakal, crab's eye62), with its double, the seed of the adenanthera pavonina tree (kondori, këndări, redwood-seed, candareen), and that these two seeds were habitually mixed up in the popular mind, producing in various countries and places concurrent scales of standard weights, one double of the other and often mixed up.
The hollow tin money of the Peninsula grew in form, weight and size out of the solid tin currency, so as to meet the necessities arising out of a later external trade carried on by means of money.
The first external nation to use coined money in trading with the Peninsula was China, whose traders adopted a system of spelter coinage to suit the native tin currency.
Tho various European systems of coinage adopted to suit the trade with the Malay Peninsula are the descendants of the native tin currency: in the case of the British by direct descent; in the case of the Dutch by descent from the Chinese spelter coinage through the Portuguese.
The scales of the Malay tin currency were based in the first instance on the standards of the external trade, and later on were modified 90 AS to conform to the scales of the predominant nations successively carrying on that trade in money-Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and British; the necessition of the trade having always mataally affected the evolution of the scales by the Malays and the nations dealing with them.
All the existing scales used in the Peninsula-Malay, Dutch through Portuguese, and Britishfor the enumeration of cash for monetary and currency purposes are adapted from the Indian system of counting cowries as money, which in its turn is closely analogous to the system long since adopted in Europe for describing money.
The currency and money used in the Peninsula, in their final forms up to date, thus exhibit a clear instance of the development of homan whought along a definite main line, as affected by environment and contact with outside influences.
" But not the Burmese, who have but recently dominated the country now named after them. The old trade must have been carried on by the Talaings (Mons) or by the Siamese (Shane).
• See also Vol. XXVIII. p. 103 ; XXVII., 91.4 ff.
** Also starling's eye, cook's eye, Job's tears, King Charles's tears. See alao Wilkinson, Dict., 9. . Naga (adenanthera pavonina) and Saga belina (abrw precatoriws), for whioblast Malay term wae mataburung, bird's oyo: se infra, Appr. IV., Extraot No. VI.
