1554.—"(Money of Ormuz).—A leque is equivalent to 50 pardaos of çadis, which is called 'bad money,' (and this leque is not a coin but a number by which they reckon at Ormuz): and each of these pardaos is equal to 2 azares, and each azar to 10 çadis, each çadi to 100 dinars, and after this fashion they calculate in the books of the Custom-house...."—Nunez, Lyvro dos Pesos, &c., in Subsidios, 25.
Here the azar is the Persian hazār or 1000 (dīnārs); the çadi Pers. sad or 100 (dīnārs); the leque or lak, 100,000 (dīnārs); and the tomān (see [TOMAUN]), which does not appear here, is 10,000 (dīnārs).
c. 1300.—"They went to the Kāfir's tent, killed him, and came back into the town, whence they carried off money belonging to the Sultan amounting to 12 laks. The lak is a sum of 100,000 (silver) dīnārs, equivalent to 10,000 Indian gold dīnārs."—Ibn Batuta, iii. 106.
c. 1340.—"The Sultan distributes daily two lāks in alms, never less; a sum of which the equivalent in money of Egypt and Syria would be 160,000 pieces of silver."—Shihābuddīn Dimishki, in Notes and Exts., xiii. 192.
In these examples from Pinto the word is used apart from money, in the Malay form, but not in the Malay sense of 10,000:
c. 1540.—"The old man desiring to satisfie Antonio de Faria's demand, Sir, said he ... the chronicles of those times affirm, how in only four yeares and an half sixteen Lacazaas (lacasá) of men were slain, every Lacazaa containing an hundred thousand."—Pinto (orig. cap. xlv.) in Cogan, p. 53.
c. 1546.—"... he ruined in 4 months space all the enemies countries, with such a destruction of people as, if credit may be given to our histories ... there died fifty Laquesaas of persons."—Ibid. p. 224.
1615.—"And the whole present was worth ten of their Leakes, as they call them; a Leake being 10,000 pounds sterling; the whole 100,000 pounds sterling."—Coryat's Letters from India (Crudities, iii. f. 25v).
1616.—"He received twenty lecks of roupies towards his charge (two hundred thousand pounds sterling)."—Sir T. Roe, reprint, p. 35; [Hak. Soc. i. 201, and see i. 95, 183, 238].
1651.—"Yeder Lac is hondert duysend."—Rogerius, 77.