Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.124

c12.124

A very large number of weights all belonging to a uniform system have been found in the two capital cities of the Harappā civilization, as well as at Chanhu-daro and other smaller sites in Sind, at Mehi in South Baluchistan, and probably (from Mockler’s description) at Sutkagen-dor in the Makran. Normally these weights are very carefully cut cubes of banded grey chert, graded extremely accurately in a curious system independent of any other known in the ancient world, and one which seems to have been far more scrupulously observed than was the ordinary practice elsewhere. The weights have been found to run in a ratio of 1, 2, 8/3, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 160, 200, 320, 640, and can be recognized as a system in which the unit was ratio 16, equivalent to 13.64 grammes, binary in the lower weights and decimal in the higher, with fractional weights in thirds. This use of the multiple 16 is interesting and curious, and the number had a traditional importance in early Indian numerology, surviving indeed in the modern coinage of 16 annas to 1 rupee!