Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/46

 the old fish-hook. In the Maldive Isles a silver larin was worth 12,000 cowries.

Silvered brass bars used as money in Nejd[1 .]

Advancing westward we find the Ossetes of the Caucasus at the present moment employ the cow as their unit of value, the prices of all commodities being stated as one, two, three or four cows, or even at one-tenth or one-hundredth of the value of a cow. The ox is worth two cows, and the cow is worth ten sheep. This people regulate compensation for wounds thus: they measure the length of the wound in barley corns, and for every barley corn which it measures a cow has to be paid. We can have little doubt that over all Hither Asia the same method of employing the cow as the principal unit of value obtained. It is that which we found among the Greeks of the Homeric Poems, who were in full contact with Northern Asia Minor, and was almost certainly that of the Semites who dwelt in the South. Just as we find the buffalo, and the pots, bronze platters, arrows, lances and hoes standing side by side in well defined mutual relation among the Bahnars of Cochin China, so we find in Homer that whilst the cow is the principal unit, the slave is employed as an occasional higher unit, and the kettle (lebes), the pot (tripous), the axe and the half axe,