CURRENCY AND COINAGE 209 



that has played a most important part in the economy of 

 life. In this matter the money-changers at the Temple 

 of Jerusalem were but the counterparts of the still living 

 money-changers on the steps of the great Shwe Dagon 

 Pagoda at Rangoon. 



The processes of weighing and assaying lead neces- 

 sarily to the creation of standards, as the results both of 

 weighment and assay can only be stated in terms involv-* 

 ing a comparison with something. One of such stan- 

 dards of weight has been the seeds of some plant, which 

 have been found by observation and experiment to 

 possess a fairly constant weight. The widely distributed 

 bright and eyed seed of the pretty creeper Abrus pre- 

 catorius is an instance. For the commonest standard 

 or fundamental starting-point of bullion weight, or as we 

 call it in England troy weight, is in the East that very 

 variously known as the rati and gunja in India and the 

 ywe in Burma, and as the mangelin and candareen in 

 Malayland and thence in China by European corrup- 

 tions of nomenclature. Every one of these is a name 

 for the same things, the abrus seeds, which are further 

 known as starlings' eyes among the Malays, cocks' eyes 

 in Persia, and King Charles's tears among English chil- 

 dren in the East, attesting their universal use there. 

 In expressing the weight of any given piece of metal the 

 habit arose in the East of stating it in terms of these 

 seeds, and a standard of weight was created. 



The usual standard of assay has been the purest gold 

 or silver that could be procured by the processes of 

 refinement in vogue, and fineness has thus been ex- 

 pressed in degrees purporting to exhibit the amount of 

 alloy or foreign substance in the piece of gold or silver 

 spoken of. A knowledge of these degrees has been 

 arrived at primarily by direct assay through the melting- 



