1 86 THE EVOLUTION OF 



and not on their relative weight combined with fineness, 

 or, as we should say, their intrinsic value. I need hardly 

 say that the Nicobarese do not recognize coins as a 

 medium of exchange. 



There is in addition a mass of evidence from all parts 

 of the world showing how savages and some semi- 

 civilized peoples employ natural articles as currency. 

 Thus rice has been used up till quite recent times as 

 currency in daily transactions in many outlying places 

 about Burma and the neighbourhood : and in some parts 

 of China this is the case no doubt still, and it was so in 

 Kashmir in the sixteenth century. Cloves were currency 

 in the Moluccas at the same time, and fish in some parts 

 of the Malay Archipelago, at any rate in 1820. Salt is 

 another article that has been used, as noticed by even 

 the earliest travellers, in China, Burma, and the hills all 

 round, and in many parts of India. Up to the time of 

 the first Burmese war in 1824, at any rate, cotton was 

 the currency between Arakan and Burma. Of live 

 stock I need hardly say much, as the use of these for 

 measuring values is a very widely spread instance to the 

 point. But chickens were currency in the Maldives off 

 the south-west coast of India in the fourteenth century, 

 and pigs in Tibet and oxen in Central Asia in much 

 later days. The Lushais of the Assam-Burma borders 

 reckon in buffaloes, and among the Khonds of Eastern 

 India, the people of the Meriah human sacrifices ; in 1845 

 1 the value of all property was estimated by the Maliah 

 Khonds in " lives," a measure which requires some 

 adjustment every time it is applied ; a buffalo, a goat, 

 a pig, or a fowl, a bag of grain, or a set of brass pots, 

 being each, with anything that may be agreed upon, 

 a " life." A hundred lives on an average may be 

 taken to consist of 10 bullocks, 10 buffaloes, 10 sacks 



