Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.9

c10.9

When metals first came to be used as a money substance, they must have been weighed in scales and then given away. The people evidently must have carried small scales and weighed with them to effect purchases as they no doubt did in Burma till even the middle of the nineteenth century. What these weights were in ancient India most of you, I believe, know. Different standards were prevalent for different metals, one for the weighing of gold, another of silver, and a third of copper. What is, however, noteworthy is that these standards start all alike from Rati or Raktikā which denotes the red seed, as Kṛṣṇala the black seed, of the Guñjā creeper. Already in the Saṃhitā period, the word Kṛṣṇala is known to the Hindus, as it occurs in the Taittirīya¹ and other Saṃhitās. But there were other natural seeds also which were connected with the metric system, the most important of which is Māsha, *Phaseolus Radiatus*, a pulse seed marked with black and grey spots. But there were two kinds of Māshas. One was used in weighing gold and equalled 5 Kṛishṇalas, and the other was employed for weighing silver and was equivalent to 2 Kṛishṇalas only. It is possible to conceive that there were different kinds of Māshas varying in weight and size, due to the varied influences of soil and climate, and that one kind was employed to weigh gold and the other to weigh silver. Raktikā or Kṛishṇala, however, was the real unit, for even the gold and silver Māshas we find reduced to the Guñjā seeds. The old Hindu mind, accustomed to fine analysis, was not content with stopping at Raktikā or Rati, the metric unit though it was, but has gone further and divided it into a number of submultiples—which is more or less fanciful. Thus a Raktikā, we are told, is in weight equivalent to 1296 Trasareṇus, a Trasareṇu being the smallest mote we observe in a sunbeam passing through a lattice. And between the Raktikā and the Trasareṇu have been mentioned a number of natural seeds, namely, barley-corn, white mustard-seed, black mustard-seed and poppy-seed. These are mere theoretical state ments, and, in actual practice, the Raktikā was the universal standard. Appended to this lecture will be found two Tables, one showing the multiples, and the other, submultiples, of the Raktikā, together with their weights in English grains.