Indian Antiquary Vol 60

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

Page 92

76
THE INDIAX ANTIQUARY
APRIL, 1931
Specimens of this coinage in the Raffles Museum at Singapore, as described by Dr. Hamitsch in JRAS., S.B., No. 39, Collection of Coins from Malacca, 1903, p. 183 ff., show that they were cast in the reigns of Kings Emmanuel (1495-1521) and John III (1521-1551), i.c., clearly in and not long after the time of Albuquerque at Malacca (1510-1511). They were obviously imitations of the tin ingot currency of the Malays, but bore the cross and globe of the two kings above mentioned and Portuguese legends. Incidentally they exhibit the commercial wisdom of his advisers in effecting only a changed and not a new coinage.
II. Shan Shell-Money. The remaining specimens on the Plate attached belong to categories of coinage altogether liffering from the "Tenasserim Medals." Fig. 4 illustrates two sides of a chilôn, K'ayûlôn (round shell), or chaubinbauk, the Shan shell-money, which was once well-known in Upper Burma. This particular form of Burmese currency is explained in 1.A., vol. LVII, pp. 91-92, and is shown on Plate II, fig. 16 ( facing p. 44) of Notes on Currency and Coinage in that volume.
Sir George Scott, writing to me in 1889, called the shells Siamese money, the Siamese being a variety of the Shan race, and said that they were “still current among the Siamese and a large portion of the Lao [Shan) States." Ma Kin, a well known female dealer in Mandalay, told me about the same time that the Shân shells came from Bawdwin (the Bor. twang of Crawford's Avo, p. 144) near Nyaungywê in the Southern Shan States.
"They are not deliberately manufactured, but are the result of the natural efflorescence of silver under certain methods of abstraction. They are necessarily as pure as bò [bar, Burmese, pure) silver, and their weight was tested by handling, so they passed as tokens. In fig. 1, Plate I, of Notes on Currency and Coinage (L.A., LVII, 12) and usually in specimens of Shan bò, offlorescence in this form is to be seen adhering to the silver from which it springs." Yule (Ava, p. 260) alludes to this: "The variety next to bò is k'aydbat, so called from k'ayti, a shell and pail, circle or winding, in consequence of the spiral lines of efflorescence on the surface." Prinsep, Useful Tables, p. 31, expresses the same opinion and says that k'ayûbåt (kharoobit) is "a silver cake with marks upon the surface, produced by crystallization of the lead scoria in the process of refinement." My own information differed from that of Yule and Prinsep as to the relation of bò and k'ayibat silver. To my mind, they are identical (see 1.A., XLVIII, 41). At any rate, Shân bò is identical with k'ayubat, and so must be the correspond. ing Burmese bo, for the process of extraction appeared to be the same in both cases descriptions by Burney in 1830, in Yule's Ava, 260 . : Anderson, Mandalay to Momien, 44; ani Trant, Two Years in Ara, 280 f., will be found in Notes on Currency and Coinage (1.A., LVII, 128 f.)
Owing to a mistake in Ridgeway's Origin of Currency, pp. 22, 29, in which he states that Shan silver shells are about the size of a cowry and argues that they are survivals of the cowry currency of Siam, eto.. I may as well state clearly that the true chalón are of all sizes, and I had one in my possession--that shown in the Plate attached--which was many times the size of a cowry shell. In 1888 about 500 specimens of chúlón passed through my hands at Mandalay, which I tried to size,' and found that "the size of any particular shell was purely accidental and an incident of construction, human intention having no concern in it."
III. Shan Silver Majizis. There also passed. in Mandalay chiefly, as gold and silver tokens, a form of currency known as majízis (magyízie) or tamarind seeds. Burmese children, especially little girls, are very fond of a game of knuckle-bone, which consists in throwing a tamarind seed into the air with one hand, and seeing how many more can be picked up by the same hand before it falls and is caught. The royal children used those made of gold and silver, and King Mindôn significantly impressed upon the little princesses the importance of keeping those that he gave them against a rainy day. They were soon mostly melted down or sold after the British annexation and became exceedingly rare. They were tokens, owing to their weight and fineness being assumed, and when, as subsequently happened, the majízis took on a uniform and conventional shape, size and fineness, we are brought to a point very near the true coin.