Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 90

74
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(APRIL, 1981
There has always boon a great deal of mystery and confusion about the "Tenasserim" currenoy, wbich apparently can be accounted for by looking at the specimens that have sur. vived, not as coin of the realm or " king's money," but as traders' tokens issued by pri. vate individuals or firms, much on the principle of similar tokens in England and elsewhere. In Notes on Currency and Coinage (1.A., XLVIII, 149) is a quotation from Cæsar Frederick, 1567, English version, which seems to explain the question: "The ourrent money that is in this Citie [Pegu) and throughout all the kingdom is called gansı or ganza, which is made of copper and lead. It is not the money of the king, but every man may stamp it that will." Again, La Loubère (Siam, English Translation, p. 14), writing in 1688, says: “ Vincent Le Blano [physician retained by the King of Siam to work in his mines] relates that the Peguar's have a mixture of Lead and Copper, which he calls sometimes ganze and sometimes ganza, and of which he reports that they make statues and a small money which is not stampt with the king's coin, but which everyone has a right to make." In 1726 Valentijn called it “Peguan gans, a brass mixed with lead," and in 1727 Alexander Hamilton talks of "plenty of ganse lead, which passeth all over the Pegu Dominions for Money." These quotations lead directly to Phayre's researches in the next oentury.
Fig. 1 of the plate attached relates to yet another specimen of the spelter type of this coinage. It resembles fig. 11 of Plate IV in Obsolete Tin Currency, which came from Pegu. These two specimens are not exactly the same, though very nearly so, the obverses coming in each case obviously from the same die, but the reverses differ altogether in the rim, though both are equally blank in the field. Moreover, their provenance was quite different. The first specimen was collected by myself in Mandalay and the second many years earlier by Phayre and illustrated in Numis. Orient. Fig. 11 is described (1.A., XLII, 122 f.) as "Hentha (goose coin or spelter weight ex. coll. R. C. Temple) procured in 1889 (not 1899 as in the text). Phayre, Numis. Orient., 1882, Plate IV, fig. 2, exhibits a better specimen, which has an illegible debased Arabic legend on tho reverse. He remarks (p. 32) that hentha ingot weights were oommon in Pegu. Phayre's specimen weighed 111 ounces and no doubt represents the penjuru (14 oz. standard) of Malay tin ingot weight."
Burmese, Siamese, Cambodian and Malay weights were often in the shape of all sorts of animals and birds, and among these were to be found the cock, a common wild bird of the South-Eastern Asiatio jungles. So spelter weights or coins of the same kind as those above described from Pegu sometimes had a cock on them, and of this there is a clear instance on Plate III, fig. 11, from Phayre's Numuis. Orient., which he showed on his Plate IV, fig. 3. (See also Ind. Ant., vol. LVII, Plate III, p. 37.] It weighed 117 oz., again representing the pen. uru or 14 oz. standard of Malay ingot weight.
In the same Plato III, fig. 10, is shown from Phayre's Numis. Oriont. a Cambodian coin, exhibiting a cock, and the interest in this coin is that its form shows that the original of the * cock' was the to, as oan also be seen by a careful comparison with the animal in fig. 5 of the plate attached and in fig. 3 of Plate V of Obsolete Tin Currency. The to has here developed into a cock in the bands of sucoessive artists. In Plate IV, fig. 3, of Phayre's Numis. Orient. is shown a clear cock' variety with debased Talaing and Burmese characters on the reverse.
Although I think that in this instance the cock image has developed out of the to, tbo inforence must not be carried too far, as among the Malay tin ingots the cock was quite a common objeot : Ne Plate II of Obsolete Tin Currency, which shows eight varieties of them, and Plate I with two others. It may be remarked also that one must be at times a little careful in attributing an image or form to any definite animal, bird, insect or fish. The vagaries of the to have been already alluded to, and on Plate IV of Obsolete Tin Currency, fig. 2 shows the Burmese hontha weight, which is, as its name implies, a goose. But fig. 6 which is practi. cally indistinguishable from it-80 close a copy is it-represents a bird of an absolutely different character, viz., a ziwazo, the swift of the edible bird's-nests. The copying of a wellknown figure for use as an animal quite foreign to its nature is carried indeed quite as far,