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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1928
The processes in former times for producing silver used for currency have been described by travellers and others. Take for instance the following quotation from Yule's Mission to Ava, 1858, p. 260 footnote :-"Colonel Burney (1830) thus describes the process of making yowet-ni, which he caused to be performed in his presence by the pwêzás. They first purified the silver and converted it into bau, in which process they contrived to remove some of the metal with the scoriae by the rough tools with which they cleared the top and sides of the boiling silver. The crucible consisted only of a small saucer or mould, which was covered up with charcoal, and occasionally exposed to view, when a piece of plank, one-and-a-half foot long and four inches broad, was used to clean the surface of the silver and prevent the metal from cooling. After the silver was purified, the requisite portion of copper was added, and when the whole was in fusion the saucer was removed from the fire ; and whilst the plank abovementioned, which was blazing, was held a little above the metal, so as to allow the flames to play upon it, a little lead was melted in, by being rubbed on the edge of the saucer, and the pweza then blew through a small bamboo upon the metal, gently and regularly, until he observed the surface cool a little, and show the first lines of the stars or flowers, like milk beginning to cream. If these were not of the form required, he put the crucible into the fire again; if they were, he immediately covered up the metal with three or four folds of cloth, wetted and cut round, so as to fit the top of the crucible. The object of the blazing piece of plank seemed to be to make the silver cool more gradually, and that of the wet cloth to fix the particular star or flower required, the moment the first lines of it appeared, and to prevent any after alteration. The Burmese said the flowers could not be produced without the lead.. Some khayôbat was made in like manner. Whilst one pwêzd was blowing on the silver the rest held up their putsôs around him, to keep the external air fron the metal. They fused the silver four times before it showed a good yowet-ni flower, and they managed to convert fifteen tikals of ten per cent. dain (after adding to it nearly two-and-a-quarter tikals of copper) into a piece of yowet-ni of precisely the same weight. (MS. Notes on Burmese Currency, ir Foreign Office, Calcutta)." See also Prinsep's Useful Tables, on coins, weights and measures, where the assay value of these different kinds of silver, forming part of the Burman indemnity, as given, is determined in the Caloutta mint.60
Again Anderson (Mandalay to Momien, 1876, p. 44), writes :"A few are employed in smelting lead [at Bhamo) and others work in gold, or smelt the silver used as currency. To six tickals of pure silver purchased from the Kakhyens (Kachins), one tickal eight annas of copper wire are added, and melted with alloy of as much lead as brings the whole to ten tickals' weight. The operation is conducted in saucers of sun-dried clay bedded in paddy husk, and covered over with charcoal. The bellows are vigorously plied, and as soon as the mass is at a red heat, the charcoal is removed, and a round flat brick button previously covered with a layer of moist clay is placed on the amalgam, which forms a thick ring round the edge, to which lead is freely added to make up the weight. As it cools, there results a white disc of silver encircled by a brownish ring. The silver is cleaned and dotted with cutoh, and is then weighed and ready to be cut up."
And Trant (Two Years in Ava, 1828, pp. 280-1) says "The process of melting is very simple. The bellows is formed of a bamboo, with a hole at the end for the air to pass through, and a bunch of foathers, fitting tight to the cylinder, acts as a piston and forces it out. The forge consists of a little charcoal on a clay fireplace; and one man with the bellows is constantly employed in keeping up the fire, whilst another superintends the fusion of the silver in a crucible. When it is separated from the dross, a portion equivalent to the value of a tical, anda due quantity of alloy, aro weighed out, and when melted merely poured from the crucible into a small tray prepared to roceive them, where the silver, on being cast out, forms its own shape, and is then constituted a tical."
60 For an explanation of the vernacular terms used, soe ante, vol. XLVIII, pp. 41, f.
