Money (by tale). Twice ten cowries[233] are a cácíní; four of these are a pána, sixteen of which must here be considered as a dramma, and in like manner a nishká as consisting of sixteen of these.
Weight. A gunjá (or seed of Abrus), is reckoned equal to two barley-corns (yavas). A valla is two gunjás and eight of these are a dharana, two of which make a yadyanaca. In like manner one dhataca is composed of fourteen vallas.
Half ten gunjás are called a másha by such as are conversant with the use of the balance; a karsha contains sixteen of what are called máshas, a pala four karshas. A karsha of gold is named suvarṇa.
This is quite in harmony with the weight of gold as given by the legislators:
| 5 kṛishnalas or raktikas | = | 1 másha. |
| 16 máshas | = | 1 karsha, aksha, tolaka, or suvarṇa. |
| 4 karshas or suvarṇas | = | 1 pala or nishká. |
| 10 palas | = | 1 dharana of gold. |
Yájnavalkya adds that according to some 5 suvarṇas = 1 pala.
All the authorities seem agreed in regarding the term suvarṇa as peculiar to gold, for which metal it is also a name.
We learn thus that the Hindu standards were fixed by means of natural seeds, and at no period do they, clever mathematicians as they were, seem to have made any effort at obtaining a mathematical basis for their metric systems.
We also observe that the weight known as the suvarṇa or gold weight par excellence is the weight of a karsha or 80 gunjás, which, if we take the gunjá = 1·75 grains Troy, gives the weight of the suvarṇa as 140 grains. I have already ([p. 127]) taken the original Hindu gold unit as not far from this amount. From the Līlāvati we may now with little misgiving assume it to have been such.
Lastly, let us observe that the barley-corn appears as the basis of the system in the tables of Brahmegupta and Bhascara, although the ṛaktika evidently overmasters it in the course of time. This is very interesting, for it indicates that the Hindus had learned the art of weighing in a comparatively northern region, where barley was the chief cereal under cultivation. If the system had been invented in the more southern parts of India, the grain of rice, the staple of life in the southern regions, would certainly have appeared as the sub-multiple of the ṛaktika, instead of the barley. As a matter of fact, rice-grains seem to have been occasionally used locally, for Colebrooke remarks that “it is also said that the ṛaktika is equal in weight to four grains of rice in the husk.” This supposition is completely in accord with what we found in Persia, where the modern weight system for gold, silver and medicine runs thus: