Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 56

52
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[May, 1919
It is worth trying for at all events. I was young and not deficient in strength. Up went one foot of the login an instant, and I believe the Golden Foot was for the moment terrified lest I should run away with it. Had there been a handle I should certainly have accomplished the feat of lifting it: but the sharp edge of the block cut my han is like a knife and I was obliged to give it up, amid the bantering laughter of the King and his Courtiers."
It may not be out of place to note here the light that the existence of this stardard silver in the XIXth Century after Christ-standard by custom and rightly described by Yule as "understood to be the medium of payment when no stipulation as to kind of money is made'--throws upon a transaction recorded as having taken place in the very dawn of Biblical history.27 'When Sarah died, as s stranger in the land of Heth, at Kirjath-arba, ''the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan," Abraham wished to treat with Ephron, the son of Zohar, for the sale to him of the cave of Mach pelah," which is in the end of his field." "For as much money as it is worth ye shall give it mo." And Ephron answered, " The land is worth four hundred shekels of silver." So " Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver ... four hundred shekels of silver, eurrent money with the merchant.” 25
Abraham, then, did precisely what a purchaser in Mandalay would have done a few years ago: he paid for his land by weight of silver of the ordinary roognised standard.29
Thak'wa, of about the same fineness as ywetni, is used in Bams chiefly, and is said to be extracted by the Chinese across the border. It is really known by its spongy appearance on its reverse surface, and by the rings caused by the settling down of the molten metal on the obverse surface. Two specimens are shown in figs. 7 and 8, Plate I. The latter has been chipped for use.
It is possible that this is not of Chinese, but of Shân make, as, in a plate facing p. 315 of his Among the Shans, Colquhoun gives a picture of 'cast silver in use in the Independent Shân States, which from its appearance is T'hakuâ silver.” 30 Colquhoun, however, gives no explanation of this, and, I may add here, of mony another Plate in the book.
Descending from and concurrent with the specially named qualities of silver, there is a large quantity of recognised alloyed standards with local names signifying the amount of alloy contained in the lump. The Taungwin Mingyi, second minister to King Thibo. gave me a list of twenty-two from memory, but the ordinary trader only recognises about eight.31
27 The passage is, however, supposed to be a late interpolation; Bee Ridgeway, Origin of Currency, p. 246.
23 Compare with this transaction that already quoted, ante, Vol. XXVI, p. 209, as taking place in A.D. 1794. So also did Mr. Judson always "weigh out" monoy at Ava in 1823. See Wayland's Memoir of the Rev. A. Judson, pp. 252, 275, 296. So did the merchants in Cambodia in 1831, and in Siam in 1833 (Moor's Indian Archipelago, pp. 56, 202, 205). So also did the people of Borneo in A.D. 977 (Indo-China, 2nd Series, Vol. I, p. 229).
- The whole sale recorded in the 23rd Chapter of Genesis, whence these quotations are taken, is replete with customs still obtaining in North India. Other Biblical references to similar pecuniary transactions in precurrenoy days are :-Gen. xvii. 13; xx. 16; xxxiii. 19; xliii. 21; Exod. xxx. 15 : Job, xlii. 11; Judges, ix. 4 ; xvi. 5; xvii. 2f. ; 1 Sam. ix. 8; xxiv, 24; 1 Chron, xxi. 25; Is. xxxiii. 18.; Ezra, vii. 25. • Names for qualities of silver do not appear to be constant throughout the country, ...., in this instance. I have known Shân chilon silver called thagwa.
31 See Phayre, Int. Num. Or., Vol. III, Pt. I, p. 38, who, however, bus a very imperfect note on the point. Yule, Ava, p. 345, says that the silver standards varied from pure to 60 per cent. alloy.