A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States

by Holt S. Hallett

The late King of Siam determined to stop the use of cowries as currency, and floated a token money of lead. As he could place what value he liked upon the lead coins, he resolved that 64 large stamped pieces, or 128 small stamped pieces, should go to a tical of silver, although the lead in them would cost less than half that amount. At the same time he issued a new flat silver tical (60 cents), a trifle less heavy than the bullet-shaped ticals that had been issued in the previous reign.

The monetary transaction in lead would bring 100 per cent profit to his treasury, and likewise—which he does not seem to have counted on—to the treasury of any one who thought fit to forge the coins. For some time the Government made a splendid profit, but soon domestic and foreign forgers filled the market with their bogus issue. A great panic ensued among the people: the lead pieces were generally refused, and the Government had to stop coining them.

Before the collapse of the lead coinage, the king determined further to replenish his treasury by another device. He issued copper coins, two of which were to be valued at a fuang (7½ cents), and to weigh together a trifle over half an ounce. To ensure their being taken by the people, he declared cowries to be no longer current. As he did not call the cowries in, and exchange them for the lead or copper coins, they became worthless to their possessors.

This was a sad stroke of fortune for the poor people, but worse was to come. When the present King of Siam came to the throne, finding that forgery of the debased coinage was naturally prevalent, he reduced the currency value of the old lead coins by declaring 40 of them equal to a fuang, or 320 to a tical,—considerably less than the actual value of the lead contained in them. The copper pieces he reduced in value to 8 for a fuang, or to a fourth of the value that they had been issued at. The people thus lost the gross value of their cowries, and were robbed of half the value of their lead coins, and three-fourths the value of their copper ones.

The only parallel that I can find for such vexatious proceedings on the part of a Government, is that of Turkey, which repudiated its paper currency in 1877–79, and in the latter year demonetised its debased coinage. But Turkey had the excuse that it had become bankrupt in 1875. It is well for the Siamese Shan States that their currency is that of British India and not that of Siam, or the people would have suffered with the Siamese. The only Siamese currency seen by me to the north of Kampheng Phet were copper coins used for small change.

After the chief had gone, we strolled about the ruins in the city. The chief of these are at Wat Pa Sing, and Wat Ngam Muang, “the beautiful temple of the city.” In the former was a Pra Bat, or footprint of Gaudama, 6½ feet long, 3 feet broad, and 4 inches deep, impressed on a stone slab, and heavily gilded; a Chinese image of Buddha; one of Maha Ka Sat; besides the ordinary images.

Maha Ka Sat, if one may judge from his likenesses, must have been a very Falstaff in the flesh. Portow accounted for his plumpness, by telling us that this individual, although very religiously disposed, was so handsome, that when he put on the yellow robe and became a monk, all the women doted on him; and as the monks and nanes with their pupils went round in the morning collecting food for the day, they piled up all the tit-bits into his bowl. From over-indulgence he grew enormously fat, and lost all chance of becoming a Buddh in his next existence.

A crowned Buddha.

The ruins both within and without the city were strewn with valuable bronze images. The people objected to these being taken away, as they contained the spirits of deceased monks, who would certainly wreak vengeance on them if their domiciles were removed from the sacred precincts. All of the trouble experienced by Carl Bock in the Zimmé States arose from his robbing the ruined temples of their images, and snapping his fingers in the faces of the chiefs and people when they remonstrated with him. How he escaped from the country with his plunder, and why he was not murdered, is an enigma to me.