Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/206

 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