Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 53

MAX. 1919)
NOTES ON CURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE
49
NOTES ON OURRENCY AND COINAGE AMONG THE BURMESE.
BY SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, Br.
(Continued from p. 42.) DRINSEP, Useful Tables, p. 31, tells us a good deal about ywe ni, yowenee as he writes
it ; and among other things that it was the standard in his time. He calls ywet na "(redleafed) flower, or star silver ; " and says it was “80 named from the starry appearance of the melted litharge on its surface." He further remarks that it was sometimes written by Europoane, rowanee, rouns, and roughanee. As to its quality he says the legal ( 1 standard) touch was 85% of b'd but that the average 60,000 tolàs of yweint in the late Ava remittanoo" turned out 2 dwts. worse owing to a loss of more than 1% in melting from the exterior scoriæ.
Ysetnt must also be the silver referred to by Crawfurd (Ava, p. 410) as used for the payment of fines to the 80-called Courts in his day (1827), for he says they were paid in tickals of silver of 10 per cent, alloy. This tichal was taken by English merchants in the early part of this century at half-a-crown.13
In his examination by Mr. Crawfurd in 1826, Mr. Gouger (afterwards author of The Prisoner in Burma) speaks constantly of tickals of "Powered silver" 1 in valuing produce. Mr. Judson, the well-known missionary, used precisely the same expression in the samo oiroumstanoo8.15 That "flowered silver" meant ywotnt or standard silver. we rather from Symge, writing a generation earlier, and also from Cox, who wrote a year later than Symes. The observant author of Two Years in Ava, p. 280, also must have meant yweint, when he says, "The flowered silver is the least adulterated with alloy."
Symes in his account of the Burmese currency as he found it in 1795. goos conisdorably wldo of what must have been the true facts. He was aware that "the quantity of alloy varies in the silver current in different parts of the Empire. At Rangoon it is adulterated 25 per cent. At Amarapura, pure, or what is called flowered silver, is most common. In this latter all royal dues are paid." Here he evidently refers to ywetni or
13 Crawfurd, Ava, p. 440: Symon, Ava, p. 327.
Groeneveldt's oxtrots from the New T"ang History (A.D. 61 8-906), Bk. 222, Pt. 2, in Indo-China. 2nd Sor., Vol. I, p. 142, soms to allude to smelting like this, when he quotes as to Java (Kaling) :
They out leaves of silver and use them as money." The Burmere expression for "floworod silver is nowotwin (silver flower), which tevenson, Dich., 6.6., explains as "a flower that appears on the surface of good silver, thonos called flowerod silver.". The expression "flowered silver" indeed noems to have been known in China, for Yulo, Marco Polo, Vol. II, p. 59, quoting Pauthier's extracts from the Yunes or Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, says that" on the issue of the paper ourrency of 1287 the official instructions to the local treasaries were to ime notes of the nominal value of two strings, i.e., 2,000 wen or cash, for overy ounce of. Bowered silver
15 Crawfurd, Ana, Appendix, pp. 18, 89, 768. See also Symes, Ava, p. 327; Cox, Burman Empire. pp. 30, 317, 321 : Wilson, Doou ments of the Burmese War, p. 222. See also Gouger, Prisoner in Burma. p. 14, where boatmen are paid in lichals of "flowered silver," Flowered silver was standard silver in Pegu about A.D. 1700, A. Hamilton, East Indies, Vol. II, p. 421.