Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/143

 all parts of the Persian empire, notably the Sigli stamped with the figure of the Persian king, which must have freely circulated in the northern parts of India that paid tribute to the king. Whether the reason given for the use of this standard is right or not, we may see hereafter, when a different explanation will be offered to the reader. That great Indian archaeologist, General Cunningham, goes further, and maintains "that the earliest Greek coins of India, those of Sophytes, are struck, not on the Attic standard, but on a native standard which is based on the rati or grain of abrus precatorius." Whatever may be the ultimate decision of this dispute, it is enough for our purpose that whilst undoubtedly a native silver standard sooner or later replaced the Attic, so likewise the Attic standard, if used for gold, did not remain at its full weight of 135 grains, but rather approximated to that of the native standard of the Daric (130 grains). It is almost certainly a native standard which appears as the weight of the gold piece (suvarna) in the tables of weights given in the Hindu treatise called Lilavati, written in the seventh century, before the Muhammadan conquest of India, and which we shall notice presently at greater length. This suvarna is the only unit for gold mentioned in the tables, and its weight can be demonstrated to be about 140 grs troy. That the gold unit only varied 10 grains in the course of 10 centuries is very remarkable.

Let us now return to the ancient peoples of Further Asia Minor and Northern Africa. The Phoenicians and their neighbours in historical times seem to have used the double of the unit of 130 grains. It is quite possible that this doubling of the unit can be explained by a simple principle, which will likewise fit in with the threefold of the same unit, which we have just now had to deal with under its name of Macedonian Talent. But how far this double unit prevailed in earlier times among the Semites it is not easy to tell. However, the evidence to be derived from the Old Testament is in favour of the priority of the unit of 130 grains. But this is not all our evidence. The Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions give us con-*