Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 253

DECEMBER, 1931)
NOTES ON INDIAN MAUNDS
223
Hind would be nearly 15 lb., or that which has been calculated from the scale given by Babur. The suggestion is thus attractive, and the difference in Persian script between 11 (yazdah) and 15 (panzdah) is very slight. There is, however, no MS. authority for the emendation, The only MS. known to me is that in the British Museum (Or. 166) which was used by Mrs. Beveridge ; and in it the word pánadah is written with the utmost clearness, as I have found it in various other Mogul MSS., transcribers being obviously alive to the danger of confusion with ydzdah. It is certain that the writer of this MS. meant 15, not 11; and if we could be sure of Mrs. Beveridge's suggestion that this MS. is the Begam's autograph, the proposed emendation could not be acoepted. If it is a copy, it is certainly a very early one, and on general principles we should not be too ready to depart from the MS., even if it gives a maund not elsewhere recorded.
In correspondence Professor Hodivala has suggested an alternative interpretation, that the royal ser in this passage may be the Kabul ser of 500 misgáls spoken of in the Baburnama (p. 632). Taking the misgal as before at 70 gr., this Kabul ser is just 5 lb. ; then the ser
of Hind' would be just llb., and we should have the Agra maund of practically 40 lb.. surviving doubtless in the bazar after the offieial change to 52 lb., if the change had been made before Babur's arrival. This identification seems possible, for the Begam was a very old lady and might still think of Kabul as the Mogul onpital, which it had been in her youth, and consequently of its ser as 'royal'; but definite evidence is wanting as to the exact force of the epithet bådshahi. On this suggestion, the gold coin was 15 lb. in weight, instead of 4 lb.; we may think the smaller ooin would have sufficed for the joke, but we cannot gummarily reject the larger one, for Babur did nothing by halves. Coins of enormous size were oocasionally struck for special purposes; and Jahangir mentions (Memoirs, i, 406) a coin weighing 500 ordinary muhr, which would be nearly a stone, and is comparable with the 15 lb. coin suggested above.
Another passage may be noticed here in connection with maunds of about 15 lb., though it takes us some distar.ce from Agra. In the Mirát-i Sikandari, which was written in Gujarat about the year 1611, Mahmûd Bigada is said to have eaten daily “one Gujarati maund, the ser of which weighed 15 Bahlolis." Taking the Bahloli at 144 gr., this gives a maund of a little over 12 lb.; but there is no reason to suppose that the Bahloli, in the strict sense, was known, or current in Gujarat at the time this chronicle was written, and I think it is reasonable to take the word in a looser sense, as equivalent to dám or paisa, which denote the commonest copper coin current at the time and place mentioned, so that all three words are best translated as 'coppers.'19 We know from the commercial records that the usual copper' in Gujarat at this time was the adheld, a half-dam, weighing nearly 162 gr.; this would give a maund of just under 14 lb. No local unit of this size is recorded in the commercial literature of the period, 80, assuming the chronicler's accuracy, the 12 lb. or 14 lb. maund must be taken as non-commercial, whether it was a retailer's unit, or a special unit used in the royal household of Gujarat.
Returning to the vicinity of Agra, I may refer to the statement made in the notice of Abul Fazl in the Madsir-ul Umnd, that that eminent literary man consumed daily 22 sers of food. In terms of the Akbari maund this is over 30 lbs., which is incredible ; but if the reference is to the 'maund of Hind' mentioned by Babur, the figure works out to about 8 lb., which is within the limits of possibility, and is, at any rate, littlo more than half of the ration attributed to Mahmûd Bigada. There are, too, some other passages regarding this period and locality which indicate the use of units other than Akbari in particular departments of the Palace, certainly in the artillery and in the cellar, and possibly in some others.
19 Cf. the statement in the Ain-i Akbart (i, 27) that the dam was at first called paisd, and also Bahlolt: the three names were thus in fact interchangeable in current language.