Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 44

40
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ APRIL, 1919
conducted in the more modern times on two scales-one representing the old Dutch and the other the British monetary system introduced into the Peninsula by Europeans.
Incidentally the enquiry led to many interesting discoveries, e.g., the true explanation of some of Tavernier's plates of Oriental coinage (1678) and of many other specimens of coins in museums, books, and so on, and of Albuquerque's Portuguese Oriental Coinage (1511).
The scales used in this Tin Currency proved to be of a most interesting nature, opening up, through the Manipuri system already mentioned, & wide vista of analogous developments all over the world : in Russia, in old Portugal and Holland and practically every country of modern Europe from the days of Charlemagne in the 7th century ; in ancient India and Kashmir, and even Egypt, Assyria and Persia. The enquiry took one in fact nearly every where in ancient and modern times, showing that one was here on the track of sone working of the human mind that is universal.
It is this consideration that in réality makes such a study as the Currency and Coinage among the Burmese possess an interest far outside the boundaries of the country now known as Burma, because in Burma we have in this matter, as it were, a living link between the present and the past.
I have gone thus at length into what I have written on this enquiry so that the reader may be put into possession of what has preceded the present notes and make himself, if he so wishes, acquainted with so much of the subject ag will render them the more intelligible and useful. I commence my further notes with some on lump currency, beginning with silver.
LUMP CURRENCY.
SILVER
The raw lump currency of Upper Burnia consisted of gold, silver, and lead, but not of copper, 2 so far as I know, as that metal is not, I believe, to be found in the country.
1 From the Shan State of Thên-ni : Yule, Ava, p. 258; Laurie, Our Burmese Wars, p. 373. For interesting references to lump gold, see Moor's Indian Archipelago, pp. 77, 217.
2 See Yule, Ara, p. 269; Crawfurd, Ava, pp. 427, 433, 436, 444. But see Crawfurd, op. cit., p. 42 and Col, Strover's Report on the Metals and Minerals of Upper Burma, quoted in Laurie's Our Burmese Wars, p. 372. Cf. Crawfurd's statement as to Siam, in hiş Siam, p. 331; also B. B. Gazetteer, Vol. I, pp. 54, 416. So the Chinese found that the people of San-bo-tsai ( ? Sumatra) in the days of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 900-1279) had no copper currency, but merely (? lump) gold and silver : Indo.China, 2nd Ser.. Vol. I, p. 187. cf. Miss Corner's China written for Bohn, Bell's ed., p. 7; and Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. ed., Vol. I, p. 232 f., as to the Maldives in 1602. See also Strettell, Ficus Elastica, pp. 76, 111; Staunton, Embassy, 1797, as to Cochin China, p. 169 f. Silver or "compraw" is the currency of the Kachins. See Anderson, Mandalay to Momien, pp. 181, 425. This word is kumpraw in Symington's
chin Vocabulary. and is given 48 synonymous to rupee; 8.0. Rupee: and it 18 compr vocabulary at p. 468, op. cit. Colquhon, Amongst the Shans, however, in & Plate facing p. 315, show
copper lats at Bassac and Ubone" (on the Mekong) without description : see also Bowring's Siam, Vol. I, p. 257.
In reference to copper, Dr. Anderson, Siom, p. 179, tells a good story of a lie in defence of delinquen. cies. When Potts, the factor at Ayuthia, at the time that the factory was burnt in 1682, was called upon to account for the losses, he explained that 500 chests of Japan copper, which the Company had in specie in Ayuthia, .. d been eaten by white-ante. Alexander Hamilton, the original raconteur of the tale, however, remarks that "Copper is thought too hard a Morsel for them." In his Mandalay to Momien, p. 468, Anderson gives the same vemacular word for "copper" and "brass." Yule, Ava, p. 345, has a very interesting note on the manner in which copper was procured in Upper Burma from the process of changing coarge (i.e., heavily alloyed with copper) silver into fine. "In this way," he says, on the authority of Mr. Spears," that about 12,000 viss (above 20 tons of copper annually reached the capital."