Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/183

 iron hoe. They are found to weigh one thing and one only, namely gold, and for that purpose they do not employ any weight standard borrowed from China or Annam, but equate a certain amount of gold to the unit of barter, and then fix as a constant that amount of gold by balancing it against a grain of the corn that forms one of the chief staples of their subsistence. Nature herself has supplied man with weights of admirable exactitude ready to his hand in the natural seeds of plants, and as soon as he finds out the need of determining with great care the precious substance which he has to win with toil and hardship from the stream, he takes the proffered means and fashions for himself a balance and weights.

We saw that a buffalo was worth 280 hoes; it is therefore an easy task for a Bahnar to tell its worth in gold. It was equally simple for the first Aryan or Semite who framed the gold shekel standard to compute the exact amount of gold which would represent the value of an ox. But perhaps we have not reached the earliest stage of all in the development of a standard for the sale of gold. I ventured to put forward in 1887 the suggestion that the way in which the amount of gold which represented the value of a cow was first fixed approximately was by measuring it in some way, as for instance by taking the amount which would fit in the palm of the hand, somewhat in the fashion that rustics measure gunpowder or shot for a gun. What was then but a mere guess may be now regarded as fairly certain. That excellent observer, M. Aymonier, notes that the Tapak tribe, who live at a distance of six days' journey from Attopoeu, wash gold. The women wade into the streams (after having first carefully placed five flowers or five leaves at the foot of a tree close by the stream to ensure good luck). Each dips a water-tight bag into the sand at the bottom of the stream, and after a long series of rewashings and cleansings at last gets the gold dust in a state of purity. The savages carry it to Attopoeu, and sell it at the rate of 9 chi of gold for a nên or bar of silver (= 100 chi). The relative value in Attopoeu is 8 chi or two bats of gold to one bar (= 100 chi) of silver, or as they express it one tical of gold is changed for 12 ticals of silver.