In this chapter, therefore, we have sought the method by which weight standards are fixed among primitive and semi-civilized peoples; we have studied the system or systems of China, Cochin-China, Cambodia, Laos and the great Islands of the Indian Ocean. Everywhere we have received the self-same answer, everywhere the lowest unit is nothing more than a natural seed or grain. We found in two places in the area studied, amongst the Tapaks of Annam and the Malays of Sumatra, the art of weighing in its earliest infancy; only one product, gold, as yet being weighed, and the weight unit employed for it being a grain of rice or maize. We found that this smallest natural unit of gold was amongst the Bahnars equated to the smallest unit of barter in use among them, the hoe, whilst their highest unit was the buffalo; and that by a simple process based on the known relation existing in value between the hoe, the muk, the jar, and the buffalo, there was no difficulty in arriving empirically at the exact value in gold of a buffalo. We found also that the two higher units of weight the picul, and the catty, which in almost every case were found to be confined to the ordinary merchandise, were beyond reasonable doubt not originally multiples of the lower the tael, but were really natural units obtained by a totally different process; the picul being the amount which an average man can conveniently carry on his back, the catty, as seen especially in the case of the neal of Cambodia, being nothing more than the cocoa-nut shell used as the ordinary measure of capacity, as a gourd of a certain kind is employed at Zanzibar, as the hen’s egg was employed by the Hebrews and also by the ancient Irish, as the cochlea or mussel shell was taken by the Romans as the basis of their measures of capacity, and as possibly the gourd itself under its name of Kyathos formed the lowest unit of capacity among the Greeks. We saw clearly that the catty has never become a weight-unit for precious metals among the Chinese, Annamites or Cambodians; the first named never having used any higher unit for such purpose than a bar of ten taels, and at the present day for the most part contenting themselves with the tael or ounce, whilst the two latter still use the nên or bar with its subdivisions into 10 denhs, or in other words, use as their highest monetary unit the tenfold of the tael or ounce. We likewise found that in Annam among the less advanced peoples there was considerable evidence to show that the bat or tical was originally the highest unit used for gold, and that this name bat was applied to weights of different amount; thus the chi which in commercial weight is only the quarter of a bat, is itself called the gold bat. The bat itself was the third of the tael. We also found the bar of silver, the common monetary unit at the present moment, equated to the buffalo, the common unit of barter among the Bahnars, and finally we had a distinct tradition that not so long ago the wild tribesmen who win the gold dust from the sands of their native brooks did not as yet even weigh the metal by means of the grains of maize which are now employed, but that they measured off a small rod of gold an inch long as the equivalent of a buffalo.
From all these facts it seems easy to trace the history of the development of weight standards in Further Asia; the first stage in trafficking in gold seems to be one purely by measure, then comes that of weighing by means of grains of corn, the weight in gold of one or more grains of corn being taken in the ordinary way of barter like other articles in the common scale of exchange. A multiple of the higher unit the bat was formed, possibly based on the slave as the multiple of the buffalo. This multiple is threefold of the bat, in that respect offering a strange analogy to the gold talent of Sicily, Magna Graecia, and Macedonia, which is the threefold of the Homeric ox-unit, and which, as I have conjectured, may have represented the value of a slave, as we certainly know as a fact that the highest unit in the Irish system, the cumhal, which represented the value of three cows or three ounces of silver, was neither more nor less than an ancilla (or ordinary slave-woman): the tenfold of this tael was the highest unit employed for either gold or silver by the most advanced peoples in this region, and is very well known as the nên or bar. All other goods were long appraised by measurement, the lowest unit of capacity being the cocoa-nut or the joint of the bamboo, the former known certainly to the Cambodians, the latter to the Chinese, whilst both are equally familiar to the Malays. The weight of the contents of the bamboo or cocoa-nut was presently taken, the standard employed being the tael, or highest unit yet employed for the precious metals. The weight of the contents would depend on the nature of the substance or liquid employed, for instance rice or some other kind of grain, or water. Thus the Chinese equate their catty to 16 taels; no doubt too convention came in at a later stage, and even though the contents might not actually weigh 16 taels, it was found convenient for practical purposes to regard some suitable multiple of the tael, such as 16, as the legal weight of the catty. A similar process was carried out in the case of the picul in the more advanced communities; a load was equated to the most convenient multiple of the catty, and as it was found that 100 catties gave a sufficiently near approximation to the ordinary load which a man could carry on his back, 100 catties were made the legal contents of the picul of trade.
We also learned how currency in baser metals such as copper or iron takes its origin. The history of the ordinary copper cash of the Chinese, which can be clearly traced step by step, brings us back to a time when a bronze knife, one of the most requisite articles of daily life, formed the ordinary small currency of the Chinese, just as the Greek obolos originally was an actual spike made of copper or iron, and just as the Bahnars of Annam still use the hoe as their lowest monetary denomination, an implement likewise similarly employed by the Chinese at an early period, as miniature hoes at one time used as true currency put beyond doubt. We also saw the negroes of Central Africa employing iron made into pieces ready to be cut into two hoes, and we also found those on the West Coast of Africa and the Hottentots employing bars of iron in a raw state, as a kind of currency. We also saw one most important feature possessed by all those in common, viz. the fact that in the determination of the value of the bar, the ingot, the piece of iron made in the shape of two hoes, and the bronze knife, not weight but linear measurement based on the parts of the human body, was the method invariably employed.
We then advanced to Western Asia and Europe and found everywhere alike the weight standards fixed by means of the seeds of plants. The process likewise was made perfectly plain. We did not find the highest denomination taken as the unit and the lowest reached by a long process of subdivisions, and finally for convenience sake described as consisting of so many grains of corn, as the brilliant French savant assumes in the case of the Assyrians: on the contrary we found that the bushel of Henry VII. was reached by first fixing the weight of the penny sterling by means of 32 grains of wheat, round and dry and “taken from the midst of the ear of wheat after the old laws of the land.” Again the Irish Kelts did not say that the unga or ounce must contain so many screapalls, and each screapall so many pingiuns, but they proceeded in quite the reverse way first fixing the weight of the pingiun by eight grains of wheat. We may then well assume that such too was the process among Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Hindus. Brahmegupta, and the legislators quoted above support this view by starting always with the smallest unit. It is only when we come to the system of Babylon we are asked to reverse the process, to admit that the idea of weights began with corn, the very commodity of all others which, according to all the instances previously quoted, was the last to be valued by weight, and which even amongst ourselves at this present moment can hardly be said to be regarded as an article appraised by weight. But furthermore if the Assyrians regarded the Talent as their unit, and their lesser denominations as its subdivisions, why did not the maker of the weight mentioned above inscribe it as ¾ obol, or by some other term to indicate that it was essentially regarded as a fraction of a higher denomination, and not as a multiple of a lower? But the ancient Assyrian who made the weight must plainly have regarded it in the latter light, for otherwise he would not have engraved on it 22 grains ½, actually resorting to the fraction of a grain. The only reasonable explanation of his conduct is that he was as firmly impressed with the idea that the basis of his system was the grain of corn (wheat) as were Brahmagupta, or Henry VII.’s parliament with the idea that the barley-corn and wheat-corn were the bases of their respective systems. If the objection be raised that the grains of corn were only devised in days long after the scientific fixing of weight standards, my answer is that if it was necessary to employ natural seeds as a means of determining the accuracy of scientifically obtained units, à fortiori it was necessary for mankind to have employed such seeds as their first step in the establishing of a system of weights.
No simpler idea connected with weight could have struck the primitive mind. The difficulty experienced by savages in counting beyond 3 or 4 is met by them by the use of counters. We are all familiar with the use of pebbles or small stones among the Greeks and Romans. Our own word calculate is simply an adaptation of the Latin calculare to count by pebbles (calculi). Some nations, probably all, have been unable to form abstract names for their numerals, and the name of the concrete object which they habitually employed as a counter has become firmly embedded as a suffix in the names of their numerals. Thus the Aztec numerals end in tetl, a pebble, because they employed small stones as counters. Similarly the Malays whom we found weighing gold by means of grains of padi employ that word as a numeral suffix, because they employed grains of rice for their calculations or, to speak more accurately, seminations. In the case of this people we find coincident the most primitive forms of numeration and of weighing, both processes being carried on by means of the same simple instrument, which Nature put ready to hand in the corn which formed their daily sustenance.
If any one still maintains that the Indian Islander or Tapak of Annam learned the art of weighing by grains from the Chinese, and would maintain that the latter either invented for themselves or borrowed from Babylonia a scientifically devised weight system, I will go a step further and try to produce some evidence of the process by which weight standards are arrived at, by seeking instances in a region so isolated as to be beyond the reach of all suspicion of having borrowed from Babylon.
From what I have said above, we cannot expect to find any such community in the Old World. The New World on the other hand supplies us with what we desire. When the Spaniards under Cortes, conquered the Aztecs of Mexico, that people, although in a high state of civilization, had as yet no system of weights. In consequence of this want the Spaniards experienced some difficulty in the division of the treasure, until they supplied the deficiency with weights and scales of their own manufacture. There was a vast treasure of gold, which metal, found on the surface or gleaned from the beds of rivers, was cast into bars, or in the shape of dust made part of the regular tribute of the southern provinces of the empire. The traffic was carried on partly by barter, and partly by means of a regulated currency of different values. This consisted of transparent quills of gold dust, bits of tin cut in the form of T, and bags full of cacao containing a specified number of grains[248].
From this we get an insight into the first beginnings of weights. Some natural unit (and by natural I mean some product of nature of which all specimens are of uniform dimension) is taken, such as the quill used by the Aztecs. The average-sized quill of any particular kind of bird presents a natural receptacle of very uniform capacity. These quills of gold-dust were estimated at so many bags containing a certain number of grains. The step is not a long one to the day when some one will balance in a simple fashion quills of gold dust against seeds of cacao, and find how much gold is equal to a nut. Nature herself supplies in the seeds of plants weight-units of marvellous uniformity. If any one objects to my assumption that the Aztecs were on the very verge of the invention of a weight system, my answer is that another race of America, whose political existence ceased under the same cruel conditions as that of their Northern contemporaries, I mean the Incas of Peru, who were in a stage of civilization almost the same as that of the Aztecs, had already found out the art of weighing before the coming of the Spaniards, although they were inferior to the Mexicans in so far as they had not a well-defined system of hieroglyphic writing, nor of currency such as the latter possessed. Scales made of silver have been discovered in Inca graves[249]. The metal of which they are made shows that they were only employed for weighing precious commodities of small bulk.
Unfortunately I can find no record of weights having been found along with the silver scales in the Inca graves. If the weights were simply natural seeds, they would easily perish, or even if perfect when the tombs were opened, would be simply regarded as part of the ordinary supply of food placed with the dead in the grave. But I forbear from laying the slightest stress on negative evidence of such a kind.
But beyond doubt we have on the American continent, far removed from connection with Asia, a series of facts closely harmonising with what we have found in Further Asia, and also among the peoples of Hither Asia, Europe and Africa. The Aztecs are still measuring gold, but the Incas have invented the balance. The Incas have no alphabet, the quipus as yet being their greatest advance towards a means of keeping a record of the past. It follows that it is possible for the human race to invent a system of weighing before it has made any advance in letters or science. Hence it is logical to infer that the civilized races of Asia and Europe could have discovered a means of weighing gold long before the Chaldean sages made a single step in their astronomical discoveries, or a single symbol of the cuneiform syllabary had as yet been impressed on brick or tablet.