"We've shouted on seven-ounce nuggets,
We've starved on a Seedee boy's pay."
R. Kipling, The Seven Seas.]
SEEMUL, SIMMUL, &c. (sometimes we have seen Symbol, and Cymbal), s. Hind. semal and sembhal; [Skt. śālmali]. The (so-called) cotton-tree Bombax Malabaricum, D.C. (N.O. Malvaceae), which occurs sporadically from Malabar to Sylhet, and from Burma to the Indus and beyond. It is often cultivated. "About March it is a striking object with its immense buttressed trunks, and its large showy red flowers, 6 inches in breadth, clustered on the leafless branches. The flower-buds are used as a potherb and the gum as a medicine" (Punjab Plants). We remember to have seen a giant of this species near Kishnagarh, the buttresses of which formed chambers, 12 or 13 feet long and 7 or 8 wide. The silky cotton is only used for stuffing pillows and the like. The wood, though wretched in quality for any ordinary purpose, lasts under water, and is commonly the material for the curbs on which wells are built and sunk in Upper India.
[c. 1807.—"... the Salmoli, or Simul ... is one of the most gaudy ornaments of the forest or village...."—Buchanan Hamilton, E. India, ii. 789.]
SEER, s. Hind. ser; Skt. seṭak. One of the most generally spread Indian denominations of weight, though, like all Indian measures, varying widely in different parts of the country. And besides the variations of local ser and ser we often find in the same locality a pakkā (pucka) and a kachchhā ([cutcha]) ser; a state of things, however, which is human, and not Indian only (see under [PUCKA]). The ser is generally (at least in upper India) equivalent to 80 tolas or rupee-weights; but even this is far from universally true. The heaviest ser in the Useful Tables (see Thomas's ed. of Prinsep) is that called "Coolpahar," equivalent to 123 tolas, and weighing 3 lbs. 1 oz. 6¼ dr. avoird.; the lightest is the ser of Malabar and the S. Mahratta country, which is little more than 8 oz. [the Macleod ser of Malabar, introduced in 1802, is of 130 tolas; 10 of these weigh 33 lb. (Madras Man. ii. 516).]
Regulation VII. of the Govt. of India of 1833 is entitled "A Reg. for altering the weight of the Furruckabad Rupee (see [RUPEE]) and for assimilating it to the legal currency of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies; for adjusting the weight of the Company's sicca Rupee, and for fixing a standard unit of weight for India." This is the nearest thing to the establishment of standard weights that existed up to 1870. The preamble says: "It is further convenient to introduce the weight of the Furruckabad Rupee as the unit of a general system of weights for Government transactions throughout India." And Section IV. contains the following:
"The Tola or [Sicca] weight to be equal to 180 grains troy, and the other denominations or weights to be derived from this unit, according to the following scale:—
8 [Rutties] = 1 Masha = 15 troy grains.
12 Mashas = 1 [Tola] = 180 ditto.