182 THE EVOLUTION OF 



bottles of commissariat rum. The bargain as a money 

 transaction was very advantageous to the Government, 

 but I found out afterwards why the people had so readily 

 accepted it as being advantageous to them, by working 

 out the value of the articles bartered in terms of their 

 currency, although I am quite sure they had no notion 

 that they possessed such a thing, and could never have 

 explained what the term meant. 



In commencing, however, an explanation of the rise 

 of the idea of currency and of the sense of the term, 

 let me quote some dealings with the less civilized peoples 

 inhabiting the British province of Burma and its neigh- 

 bourhood. As everywhere else, the Government of 

 India has to preserve order among the uncivilized by 

 means of fines and some sort of pecuniary penalties and 

 enforced compensations, and it has to collect revenue 

 in some shape or other, and for these purposes it must 

 perforce have some means of apportioning values. But 

 the people only understand barter, and the notion of 

 relative value is entirely rudimentary. In these circum- 

 stances in Assam, among the Kacharis, the British 

 Courts have drawn up for their own use a regular scale 

 of fines and revenue in terms of the domesticated ani- 

 mals kept by the people ; e. g. a man's revenue would 

 be assessed, not at Rs. 10, but at a big buffalo; a fine 

 would be fixed not at a quarter of a rupee, but at a cock 

 and two small hens. So amongst the Chins in Burma, 

 tribute by way of a customary present would not be 

 Rs. 10, but a full-grown hog, and a fine or compensation 

 for injury would not be Rs. 5, but a silk jacket. Even 

 the old native Government of Burma had to adopt 

 a system akin to this, for at the time of the first Burma 

 war of 1824 it levied fines, as a variant of the very 

 ancient notion of slavery for debt and partly as a kind 



