Ordiar ex minimis.
Carm. de ponderibus.
We have seen that the Chinese system of weights is based upon natural seeds of plants, and we have actually found the wild hillsmen of Annam and Laos weighing their gold dust by grains of maize and rice. But it may be urged by the advocates of a Babylonian scientific origin based on the one-fifth of the cube of the royal ell, which in turn is based upon the sun’s apparent diameter, that the Chinese names of weights are merely conventional terms taken from the name of certain seeds, and on the other hand that the mere fact that a very barbarous people like the Bahnars of Annam weigh their gold dust by grains of rice is no evidence that people in a higher stage of culture were content with such rude metric standards. I propose to show in this chapter that it has been the actual practice of peoples as far advanced in civilization as the ancient Greeks or Italians, to employ seeds as weights down to the present day in Asia, that it was the general practice in the middle ages, that it was likewise the practice of the Romans of the empire, of the Greeks, and finally that such too was the practice of the Assyrians themselves at a period long before the bronze Lion weights were ever cast, or the stone Duck weights were carved. If I succeed in proving this proposition, the doctrine that the art of weighing was scientific must give place to the contention that it was purely empirical.
As we have found among the barbarians of Asia the first beginnings of the art of weighing by the employment of grains of rice and maize, it is best for us to take first in order some other Asiatic countries lying towards the same region.
The great islands of the Indian Archipelago, singularly rich in all endowments of nature, have for ages enjoyed a high degree of culture. Conveniently placed, they have received all the advantages of contact with the civilization of China, India, and even that of the Arabs from the distant west of Asia. Never were people more favourably situated for obtaining foreign systems of weights and measures, if they felt so disposed, than the Malays of Java and Sumatra and the other islands of the Indian Archipelago. That admirable observer, John Crawfurd, writing in 1820 says[225]: “In the native measures everything is estimated by bulk and not by weight. Among a rude people corn would necessarily be the first commodity that would render it a matter of necessity and convenience to fix some means for its exchange or barter. The manner in which this is effected among the Javanese will point out the imperfection of their methods. Rice, the principal grain, is in reaping nipped off the stalk with a few inches of the straw, tied up in sheaves or parcels and then housed or sold, or otherwise disposed of. The quantity of rice in the straw which can be clenched between the thumb and the middle finger is called a gagam or handful, and forms the lowest denomination. Three gagams or handfuls make one pochong, the quantity which can be clenched between both hands joined. This is properly a sheaf. Two sheaves or pochongs joined together, as is always the case, for the convenience of being thrown across a stick for transportation, make a double sheaf or gedeng. Five gedengs make a songga, the highest measure in some provinces, or twenty-four make an hamat, the more general measure. From their very nature these measures are indefinite and hardly amount to more accuracy than we employ ourselves when we speak of sheaves of corn. In the same district they are tolerably regular in the quantity of grain or straw they contain, but such is the wide difference between different districts or provinces, that the same nominal measures are often twice, nay three times as large in one as in another. For the hamat or larger measure perhaps about eight hundred pounds avoirdupois might be considered a fair average for the different provinces of Java. This may convey some loose notion of the quantities intended to be represented. For dry and liquid measures they may naturally have recourse to the shell of the cocoanut and the joint of the bamboo which are constantly at hand. The first called by the Malays chupa is estimated to be two and a half pounds avoirdupois. The second is called by some tribes kulch and is equal to a gallon, but the most common bamboo measure is the gantung, which is twice this amount. To those exact and business-like dealers, the Chinese, and in a less degree to the Arabs and people of the east coast of the Indian Peninsula, the Indian islanders are chiefly indebted for any precision we find in their weights. In all the traffic carried on between the commercial tribes and foreigners, the Chinese weights, though occasionally under native names, are constantly referred to. The lowest of these, called sometimes by the native name of Bungkal, but more frequently by the Chinese name of Tahil [tael], varies from twenty-four pennyweights nine grains to thirty pennyweights and twenty grains. Ten of these make a kati [catty] or about twenty ounces avoirdupois; one hundred katis make a pikul or 133⅓ lbs. avoirdupois, and thirty pikuls make one koyan. Of these the kati and the pikul, because they are constantly referred to in considerable mercantile dealings, are the only well-defined weights. The koyan by some is reckoned at twenty pikuls, by others at twenty-seven, twenty-eight and even at forty. The Dutch are fond of equalizing it with their own standards and consider it as equal to a last or two tons.
“The Bahara, an Arabic weight, is occasionally used in the weighing of pepper, but its amount is very indefinite, for in some of the countries of the Archipelago it amounts to 396 lbs., and in others to 560 lbs.”
Elsewhere he says[226], “The picul is strictly a Chinese weight as its amount shews, though the term happens in this case to be native. Its meaning in the vernacular languages is a natural load or burthen, and when used in this primitive sense it, without reference to the Chinese weight, is not found to exceed eighty pounds avoirdupois.” This is a fact of great importance as we shall see when we come to the development of the mina and talent of Graeco-Asiatic commerce.
Finally Crawfurd says, “The nice question of weighing gold, the only native commodity which could not be estimated by tale or bulk, has given rise to the use of weights among the natives themselves. Grains of rice are still occasionally used in the weighing of gold in the neighbourhood of the gold mines in Sumatra” (p. 274).
I have quoted at full length these passages in order that the reader may accept with fuller confidence statements so instructive as regards the origin of weight, the first object to be weighed, and the origin of the picul, or as we may call it the talent of Eastern Asia. Nine years before Crawfurd wrote there had appeared William Marsden’s admirable History of Sumatra[227]. He gives us far fuller information on the subject of gold than Crawfurd has done. Thus he writes: “In those parts of the country where traffic in this article (gold dust) is considerable, it is employed as currency instead of coin; every man carries small scales about him, and purchases are made with it so low as to the weight of a grain or two of padi. Various seeds are used as gold weights, but more especially these two: the one called rakat or saga-tim-bañgan (Glycine abrus L or abrus maculatus of the Batavian trans.), being the well-known scarlet pea with a black spot, twenty-four of which constitute a mas, and sixteen mas (mace) a tāil (tael): the other called saga puku and kondori batang (Aden anthera pavonia L), a scarlet or rather coral bean much larger than the former, and without the black spot. It is the candarin weight of the Chinese, of which one hundred make a tāil and equal, according to the tables published by Stevens, to 5·7984 gr. Troy, but the average weight of those in my possession is 10·50 Troy grains. The tāil differs however in the northern and southern parts of the island, being at Natal, Padang, Bencoolen and elsewhere twenty-six pennyweights six grains. At Achin the bangkal of thirty pennyweights twenty-one grains is the standard. Spanish dollars are everywhere current and accounts are kept in dollars, sukus (imaginary quarter dollars) and kepping or copper cash, of which four hundred go to the dollar. Besides these there are silver fanams, single, double and treble (the latter, called tali), coined at Madras, twenty-four fanams or eight talis being equal to the Spanish dollar, which is always valued in the English settlements at five shillings.”