1554.—"The weight with which they weigh (at Malaca) gold, musk, seed-pearl, coral, calambuco ... consists of cates which contain 20 tael, each tael 16 mazes, each maz 20 cumduryns. Also one paual 4 mazes, one maz 4 cupões (see [KOBANG]), one cupão 5 cumduryns (see [CANDAREEN])."—A. Nunez, 39.
1598.—"Likewise a Tael of Malacca is 16 Mases."—Linschoten, 44; [Hak. Soc. i. 149].
1599.—"Bezar sive Bazar (i.e. [Bezoar], q.v.) per Masas venditur."—De Bry, ii. 64.
1625.—"I have also sent by Master Tomkins of their coine (Achin) ... that is of gold named a Mas, and is ninepence halfpenie neerest."—Capt. T. Davis, in Purchas, i. 117.
1813.—"Milburn gives the following table of weights used at Achin, but it is quite inconsistent with the statements of Crawfurd and Linschoten above.
| 4 | copangs | = 1 mace |
| 5 | mace | = 1 mayam |
| 16 | mayam | = 1 tale |
| 5 | tales | = 1 bancal |
| 20 | bancals | = 1 catty |
| 200 | catties | = 1 bahar." |
Milburn, ii. 329. [Mr. Skeat notes that here "copang" is Malay kupang; tale, tali; bancal, bongkal.]
MACHEEN, MAHACHEEN, n.p. This name, Mahā-chīna, "Great China," is one by which China was known in India in the early centuries of our era, and the term is still to be heard in India in the same sense in which Al-Birūnī uses it, saying that all beyond the great mountains (Himālaya) is Mahā-chīn. But "in later times the majority, not knowing the meaning of the expression, seem to have used it pleonastically coupled with Chīn, to denote the same thing, Chīn and Māchīn, a phrase having some analogy to the way Sind and Hind was used to express all India, but a stronger one to Gog and Magog, as applied to the northern nations of Asia." And eventually Chīn was discovered to be the eldest son of Japhet, and Māchīn his grandson; which is much the same as saying that Britain was the eldest son of Brut the Trojan, and Great Britain his grandson! (Cathay and the Way Thither, p. cxix.).
In the days of the Mongol supremacy in China, when Chinese affairs were for a time more distinctly conceived in Western Asia, and the name of Manzi as denoting Southern China, unconquered by the Mongols till 1275, was current in the West, it would appear that this name was confounded with Māchīn, and the latter thus acquired a specific but erroneous application. One author of the 16th century also (quoted by Klaproth, J. As. Soc. ser. 2, tom. i. 115) distinguishes Chīn and Māchīn as N. and S. China, but this distinction seems never to have been entertained by the Hindus. Ibn Batuta sometimes distinguishes Ṣīn (i.e. Chīn) as South China from Khitāi (see [CATHAY]) as North China. In times when intimacy with China had again ceased, the double name seems to have recovered its old vagueness as a rotund way of saying China, and had no more plurality of sense than in modern parlance Sodor and Man. But then comes an occasional new application of Māchīn to Indo-China, as in Conti (followed by Fra Mauro). An exceptional application, arising from the Arab habit of applying the name of a country to the capital or the chief port frequented by them, arose in the Middle Ages, through which Canton became known in the West as the city of Māchīn, or in Persian translation Chīnkalān, i.e. Great Chīn.
Mahāchīna as applied to China: