Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/45

 Siamese silver bullet money: A. B. Early form as simple piece of wire. C. Last stage of degradation.

ring and doubled up, which probably originally formed some kind of ornament. The bullet shaped tical is now struck as a coin of European form. Just as perhaps the silver shells of Burmah became the multiple unit of a large number of real cowries, so the fish-hook made of silver came into use as a multiple unit, when the bronze fish-hook had already become conventionalized into a true coin. The silver larins of Ceylon weigh about 170 grs. troy, and those of Southern India are said by Professor Wilson to weigh the same, although some of them weigh only 76 grs. or less than half. As the rupee weighs about 180 grs. the silver fish-hook may represent the usual unit employed for silver, strong national conservatism requiring that the silver currency should take the same form as the ancient fish-hook currency of bronze. There are still in circulation in Nejd in Arabia small bars of silvered brass, which bear on the back Arabic inscriptions. It is hardly possible to doubt that in these little pieces of metal we have the last surviving descendants of
 * tion from a piece of silver wire twisted into the form of a