Indian Antiquary Vol 61

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

Page 32

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(FEBRUARY, 1932
179.666 gr., 80 of which made a ser; the maund was thus 82 lb., and the standardisation effected in 1833 made only a trifling difference. The same authority says that the factory maund "would appear to have been adopted in 1787 to save calculation on the home remittances of produce, 3 factory maunds being almost exactly equal to 2 cwt."; the factory maund was thus 743 lb. Information is wanting as to the origin of the bazaar maund. As to the factory maund, I think it may reasonably be taken as an adaptation of the Shahjahanî, which, as has been said above, had come into use on the Hûglî; the slight increase of about 10 ounces would be a natural measure to simplify calculations, as suggested in Useful Tables.
While, however, the old 64 lb. maund had been superseded in Calcutta, it would appear to have survived in the mofassil. The Silberrad Committee reported (p. 37) that a ser of 60 standard tolas was currently used in retail trade in 16 districts of Bengal; this gives a maund of 62 lb., which may be explained conjecturally as a survival of the old unit, slightly modified so as to make use of a round number of the new rupee or tola-weights. I cannot, however, write with any confidence regarding retail maunds, each of which would have to be worked out on the spot; and I will merely suggest that some of them, though not all, are probably survivals of old units which have been superseded in wholesale trade as the result of official action. Apart from the 60-tola ser of Bengal, I may instance two retail maunds with which I was familiar twenty years ago in the central parts of the United Provinces, one containing 16, the other 20, standard sers. The first is almost exactly 33 lb., the second is 41 lb.; and if these are not survivals of the two Agra maunds recorded in the Ain-i Akbari, the coinci. denco is very remarkable. It will be noticed that in some cases of recorded standardisation the size of the maund was substantially increased, and probably the resulting sers were felt to be inconveniently large for ordinary retail transactions, so that mere inertia may not be the only reason for the survival of the older and smaller units.
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VIII. Summary. When we go behind the official maunds, we find the following units prevalent, though not necessarily to the exclusion of others, in wholesale commerce in different regions of India. Region.
16. (rounded). South India (excluding the pepper ports)
.. 23 to 27 Delhi .. .. . ..
.. .. .. .. 28 to 29 Gujarat .. .. .. Agra and Central India .. ..
.. 33 and 40 Bengal, near the Hügli .. ..
.. 64 East of the Meghn& ..
.. 46 Most, but by no means all, of the relevant passages found in the literature from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century can be interpreted satisfactorily in terms of these units.
Some passages, where the weights given seem to be fantastically high, can be read as probable, or possible, on the hypothesis that the Arab maund of about 2 lb. survived in certain administrative departments in northern India.
Other passages indicate that a maund of about 15 lb. was known to the Mogul administration, though not recorded in wholesale commerce.
This enumeration practically exhausts the sources to which I have access; but they do not cover the whole of India, and it is not suggested that the enumeration is complete. Additions to it would be welcome, notably for Sind, the Panjab, Bihår and Rajpûtånd.
I have hazarded the guess that the southern maund may originally have represented half a porter's load. This suggestion may be extended to the Delhi maund, and possibly to the Gujarat and the smaller Agra maund; while it might also be applied to Bengal as representing a whole lood, for Bengal in many ways thought differently from the rest of India. Anything