Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/194

 are called mashas, 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 nishka. 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 raktika, 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 raktika 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