Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 89

APRIL, 1931] ON CERTAIN SPECIMENS OF FORMER CURRENCY IN BURMA
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representation may have arisen out of the much greater difficulty of engraving a five pointed star. The mangosteen is a prominent objeot in the Malay Peninsula and almost peculiar to it.
The real find spot of this coin or weight could hardly have been Mergui, and should have been given as Kedah, since Phayre (Numis. Orient., Coins from Aracan, Pegu and Tenasserim, Plates III and IV) gives several examples, some with Pali and debased Talaing and Burmese characters on the reverse : "Mahdsukam Nagaram (City of great rest, apparently Kedah)." That this legend really referred to Kedah is shown (1.A., XLII, 118, n. 55) thus : "The Mergui weights and coins had on the reverse debased imitations of Burmese legends, which one of them shows to have been Mahásukam Nagaram (ungrammatical Pali)." It would mean "City of great peace" and clearly refers to Kedah, which "on later coins asgumed the Arabic form Daru'l-amán, Land of peace. Thus Millies' (op. cit., pp. 133, 137) readings are Daru'l-uman Balad Kadah and Daru'l-aman Kadah (Land of peace, City of Kedah and Land of peace, Kedah) on tin coins of 1741 and 1809. Mr. Otto Blagden told me that the capital of Kedah was known in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as Léngkasuka, Land of Peace,' a name still remembered."
The counterparts of Tavernier's "great piece" of the Malay tin currency and its like, as further illustrated above, have been found in Mergui and Pegu in spelter, or perhaps it would be more correct to say in pewter, as the metal is a mixture of lead and tin, and is not zino. A sample is shown on Plate III, fig. 11, with a distinct to on it, taken from Phayre Numis. Orient., which connects it with the to on the tin piece.
A discussion on spelter and tin when applied to the coinage and weights of South-Eastern Asia will be found in 1.A., vol. XLVIII, Notes on Currency and Coinage, p. 149 f. where the various amalgams used in making the spelter and pewter are explained, and also the vernacular terms therefor, tutnag, ganza and calin (calai).
Whether the large tin coin from Kedah or the corresponding spelter specimens from Mergui, Tavoy and Pegu are the older is a question one would like to see settled if possible. The presence of the to on the large tin currenoy of Kedah seems to show that it was a copy of the large spelter currenoy of the Tenasserim districts of Mergui and Tavoy and of Pegu proper, yet it is quite possible that the to (a mythical half deer half bird) is not indigenous in Burma, but is the common property of all South-Eastern Asia.
The principle of making weights of metal ingots and models of animals is very old in India itself, going back to the early days of Buddhism, before Christ at any rate. It was well known in very early Egypt, and among the Assyrians and ancient Jews, Persians and Greeke: See Plate VI of Obsolete Tin Currency. It is again very old in Burma, Siam and Cambodia, and a fair general inference is that it travelled from India to Burma and thence to Siam. At the same time the principle is as old in China as in Asia further to the west, but whether it travelled originally from the west into China or not, it would now be difficult to say. That it travelled from China to the Malay Peninsula is, however, hardly doubtful, as the tin ingot currency of the Malays was the direct descendant of the method employed in bartering in their chief trading commodity-tin-evolved out of the business needs of the early Malay traders, dealing in the first place with Chinese sailors and merchants. They invented more probably borrowed-their gambar or animal-shaped tin currency in an attempt to regulate the tin ingots by giving them various readily recognisable shapes, which could be made to conform to definite standards.
On the whole argument the inference is that this practice of making tin ingots in animal shapes had a two-fold origin in influences arising on the one hand from Burma and Tenasgerim overland and on the other from China overseas. The transfer of animal images to the fields of coins necessarily followed the animal shapes of the metal ingots. It may also be here remarked that there is a remarkable likeness in the weights, measures, currency and coinage of the whole world, but this is not the place to further descant on that fact of universal application brought about by ancient trading contacts,