Our sovereign contains 113 grains of fine gold; and as the full weight of the gold rupee or muhr (mohur) of the Mughal rulers was 175 grains, its full value as fine gold was £1 11s. of our money. At the mean weight of the gold (167.22 grs.) in 46 coins, as recorded in Hobson-Jobson, p. 438, the value would be £1 9s. 7¼d. By Tavernier’s reckoning (at 21 livres) the full value was £1 11s. 6d. One-fourteenth of £1 11s. is 26.57d.; this was therefore the value of the silver rupee of the Mughals, which had the same weight as the gold coin. With the muhr at £1 11s. 6d. the value of the rupee would be 2s. 3d. At 26.57/30d., the French sol was worth 0.885d. Bernier remarked (Travels, Constable’s translation, p. 200) that the value of the silver rupee was about 30 sols, and on p. 223, about 29 sols, Tavernier also agreeing that the actual value should be under 30 sols; in the latter case the sol would be equal to 0.916d. Taking the average value at 0.9d., and 20 sols to a livre, the value of the livre was 1s. 6d. Three livres were equal to one écu (4s. 6d.), one-fifth of which, as noted above, would make the value of the larin 10.8d. This was not an accurate estimate of its value, since according to Tavernier (i, p. 136) 46 livres 1½ deniers (each = one-twelfth of a sol) were the exact equivalent of a Persian tōmān of that period, which was thus worth £3 9s. 2¼d. of our money; and as 80 larins made one tōmān (i, p. 136; ii, p. 590) the true value of the larin in Persia (and India) in the middle of the seventeenth century was 10.375d. This would require the silver in it to weigh 76.08 grains. According to Dr. J. G. Da Cunha, Sir John Chardin stated that the value was two and a half shāhis, or 11 sols 3 deniers, that is, 10.122d.; but by Tavernier’s reckoning (i, p. 135) two and a half shāhis would be worth 10.406d. Tavernier added that from Baghdad to Ceylon all business was done in larins. W. Barret writing in 1584 on Money and Measures (Hakluyt), remarked of them, “These be the best currant money in all the Indies.”
Dr. Davy stated (Travels, etc., p. 181) that fifty ridīs were equal to about twenty-nine shillings (1820); thus the value of the coin was then only about seven pence in Ceylon.
Although Prof. Rhys Davids mentioned (Coins and Measures of Ceylon, p. 35) that five ridīs were spoken of [about 1870] as the equivalent of a rix-dollar—both coins being then out of circulation—thus making the value of the ridī less than fivepence, he gave the weight of three of these coins as being from 72½ to 74½ grains. Dr. Da Cunha gave a weight of 68½ to 72 grains (Contributions, etc., part 3, p. 10). With an allowance for wear, it is therefore probable that the Persian weight of 76 grains was adhered to in Ceylon, and also in India.
In answer to my inquiry, Messrs. H. B. Andris and Co., of Kandy, have confirmed the statement made to me elsewhere, that the later value of the ridī in Ceylon was one-third of a rupee,—“panam pahayi salli hatarayi,” five panams and four sallis.
Prof. Rhys Davids noted that Pyrard stated the value of those made early in the seventeenth century in the Maldives, to be about eight sols, that is, 7.2d. It is not clear why the money had the low values recorded above, unless the quality of the silver had deteriorated. In Ceylon, in Knox’s time all the coins were tested in the fire.
According to the Mahāvansa, King Bhuvanēka-Bāhu VI in about A.D. 1475 constructed a relic casket out of seven thousand coins which are termed rajata in the Pāli original, and ridī in the Sinhalese edition, both words meaning silver. As there appear to have been comparatively few other silver coins in the country, none, so far as is known, having been coined since the beginning of the previous century, these were probably larins.
The next reference to the coin in Ceylon goes back to about the same date; it is given by Mr. Pieris (Ceylon: the Portuguese Era, i, p. 50), apparently taken from the manuscript history of de Queiroz. King Dharma Parākrama-Bāhu in 1518 related to the Portuguese Governor of Colombo that in his youth a certain man who had killed another did not possess the fifty larins which would have ransomed his life, and therefore he was executed. One would understand from this that these coins were plentiful in the island before A.D. 1500.
In the same work (i, p. 298) it is recorded that in 1596 the Portuguese captured five elephants laden with larins. Diogo do Couto mentioned that while besieged in Kōṭṭē in 1565, the Portuguese made some larins, “there being craftsmen of that calling” (Ferguson’s translation, p. 233), thus confirming Knox’s statement that this money was coined in Ceylon.
The Massa or Masurama which is mentioned so frequently in the stories is probably in most cases a copper coin, but gold and silver massas were also issued. In vol. iii, pp. 136, 137, line 31, 150, 1. 24, 387, 1. 29, the coins appear to have been gold massas. It is apparently the gold massa which is referred to in Mah. ii, 81, v. 45, where it is stated that King Wijaya-Bāhu (A.D. 1236–1240) paid 84,000 gold kahāpaṇas to transcribers of “the sacred book of the law.” Perhaps, also, in the stories the kahāpaṇas may have been golden massas or double massas. Compare vol. i, p. 348, and vol. iii, p. 263, line 33, and see below.
The commoner or standard coins of all three denominations have practically the same weight, which in the heavier examples is usually about 66 or 67 grains, though a few gold and silver coins exceed this weight, two silver ones of Niśśaṅka-Malla, from Mahiyangana wihāra, for which I am indebted to Prof. C. G. Seligmann, averaging 77½ grains. Out of 150 copper coins only one turned the scale at 69 grains. If we assume that the Indian copper scale of General Cunningham was followed, and that, with allowance for wear and oxidation, the correct original weight of all three classes was 72 grains, a massa of fine gold would be worth 12s. 8.92d. of our money. Compared with the Persian larin, the value of the silver massa of 72 grains, if fine silver, would be 9.82d., or 1/15.56 of the gold one. Respecting the copper coin, Dr. Davy stated early last century (Travels, p. 245) that the ridī (or larin) was then equivalent to sixty-four “Kandian challies,” that is, as he also terms them, “Dambadinia challies,” the common village name of the copper massas; at this ratio the silver massa of 72 grains would be equivalent to 60.57 copper massas, each being worth 0.162d., or about one-sixth of a penny.[1] Late in the fifteenth century the Indian ratio of the value of copper to silver appears, according to Thomas, to have been 64 to 1, and at the beginning of the sixteenth, according to Whiteway, 80 to 1.[2] I have met with no villager who knew what the coins termed kahawaṇuwa (kahāpaṇa) and masurama were.