Indian Antiquary Vol 56

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 240

212
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1927
represent fractions of a gold sovereign, proceeded on a fundamental misconception; and the Royal Proclamation of 1844 remained a dead letter. All accounts (except those of the Government) were kept in dollars, and the sole instrument and medium of exchange, both at Hong Kong and at all the open ports (except Shanghai) continued to be the silver dollar, weighed in Hong Kong at 1,000 dollars to 717 taels, i.e., nearly 415 grains per dollar."
In Burma Sycee was well understood and Anderson (Mandlay to Momein, 1876, p. 377) found that "all the coined money [at Bhamo] was exchanged for sycee, or lump, silver, at the rate of one hundred rupees for seventy tickals of the finest quality, or seventy-three tickals and a half of the more alloyed which passes among the Kakhyens (Kachins)."
Coming to my own time, 1887 onward, on Fig. 15, Plate II, I show a piece of myinka or saddle silver, which has been chipped for use. This is nothing but the well-known sycee silver10 of former Burmese commerce and the old books. It had, however, become rare in Burma by 1889 and I only procured one specimen in Mandalay, where I stayed three years and made many enquiries. Nevertheless, it was a standing "product" of Upper Burma,11 and until 1885, at any rate, the only currency in Bhamo, where our political agents were paid in it. E.g., in 1868 Col. G. A. Strover drew his salary there in sycee silver, while political agent, then and subsequently, though correspondence in 1889 failed to produce a specimen from Bha.no.
In reference to Col. Strover's experience there is a curious allusion to sycee silver, charac. teristic of Burmese ways, in Sladen's Official Narrative of the Expedition to Explore the Trade Routes to China via Bhamo in 1867:12 "All the money in my possession consisted of India. coined rupees, which, it was said, could not pass current among Kakhyens [Kachins], or within the Shan States. The rupees must be changed for silver bullion of peculiar standard [sycee], readily procurable and current everywhere. Such at least was the information tendered at Mandalay: and yet on arrival at Bhamo, silver had become, for some unaccountable reason, an unknown commodity altogether. I would gladly have changed 5,000 rupees. It was our all, but no amount of solicitation was of any avail in procuring as many hundreds in bullion. I importuned everyone. The Chinese said they were poor and did not possess silver. The officials excused the emptiness of their treasury by assuring me that remittances had only just been made to the capital on account of the previous year's taxes." All this was the result of organized opposition to Sladen's mission.
Later on Sladen writes that he "lost 30 per cent. on exchanging rupees for silver [sycee] bullion, but this loss obviously had no bearing on the true relative value of the rupees and the bullion. But it is possible in these regions for even the locally current sycee to be of small value." Thus Cooper, 13 writing from "Tai-tsan-lco, Western border of China" in 1868, says: "For the information of future travellers I should mention that beyond this place, as far as Lassa, money is at a great discount, two or three needles and a little thread, or a piece of Chinese cloth, procuring what money cannot .. Sycee is used at a great loss."
As an instance of the commerical value of preserving the form of a currency, I may mention that in Rangoon in 1891 I purchased in the Municipal Market a piece of inferior silver (now in the British Museum) which came from Bombay and consisted of half a piece
This seems to be the bálish silver quoted by Yule, Hobson-Jobson, s.v., Shoes of Gold. 10 Temple, Travels of Peter Mundy, vol. III, pp. 195, n. 1, 309, n. 6.
11 See British Burma Gazetteer, vol. I, p. 472.
13 House of Commons, Parl. Papers, No. 165 of 1871, pp. 27, 134. 13 Ibid., p. 146.