Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/179

 *stance or liquid with which the measure is filled, the weight unit derived will be heavier or lighter, just as the Irish barrel of wheat is 6 stones heavier than the barrel of oats. A cocoa-*nut, or bamboo-joint filled with silver will give a far heavier weight unit than if it is weighed when filled with rice.

We have now had a survey of the monetary and weight systems of China, Annam, Cambodia and Laos, and everywhere found that the nên or bar of 10 taels is the highest known metallic unit, and that except in Laos the counting of money even by the catty or pound is unknown, the Chinese themselves only employing the tael as their highest monetary unit, the catty being kept as in Annam and Cambodia itself for ordinary goods. This is borne out by the practices in the weighing of gold. In Attopoeu, the region where gold is found, 8 chi (= 2 ticals or bats = 4 slings = 30 grammes) are exchanged for a bar of silver (= 100 chi = 375 grammes). M. Aymonier thinks that the gold bat, that is to say the weight in gold of a tical (15 grammes, 234 grains Troy), must have been the unit for weighing gold, as formerly it was necessary to give a gold bat in order to marry a girl of the blood royal. This gets considerable support from the fact that in Sieng-Khan the gold bat has only the weight of a sling or chi (58-1/2 grains Troy), that is the quarter of a tical, and the weight of the tical or bat is called a damling. In fact they hardly reckon gold in any other way than by this small damling which is only the weight of a tical (234 grains Troy). In reference to my argument that as gold is the first of all things to be weighed, the primitive weight unit is certain to be small, as no man has, as a rule, any need to weigh his gold by the hundredweight or large mercantile talent, this fact that the highest unit for weighing gold in Attopoeu is so small, not even reaching the weight of the Graeco-Phoenician heavy gold shekel or double ox-unit of 260 grains, is of considerable importance.

This region supplies us with yet another point which can help to clear up the history of early metallic currency. The iron ingots which come from the Cambodian provinces of Kom-*pong Soai form a special kind of money. These ingots are not weighed, but they have the length of the space between the