September 2, 1922] 



NA TURE 



127 



looked askance at by the Burmans, who sometimes 

 find themselves outwitted bv the Chinaman when it 

 is used. This instrument, frequently well made of 

 bone or ivory, has one movable weight and two or 

 three points of support, with scales marked on the rod 

 corresponding to each point of support. 



Measures of Length. — As almost throughout the 

 world the cubit, or distance from the elbow to the tip 

 of the middle-finger, was the original fundamental 

 unit. This is subdivided into spans, fist-breadths, 

 and digits, and also into sixteenths. A very usual 

 table in Northern India is : 3 jau (barleycorns) =one 

 angul (digit) ; 3 angul =one girha ; 4 angul =one 

 mushti (fist-breadth) ; 4 girha or 3 mushti -one 

 balisht (span) ; 2 balisht =one hath (cubit) ; 2 hath = 

 one gaz (yard). 



The names of the various measures of length 

 naturally vary in different parts of the country ; thus 

 the yard is a val, var, or ivar in Bombay and the 

 Central Provinces, and a gaik in Burma ; the cubit, 

 known as halh throughout Northern India, is a mura 

 or mulam in parts of Madras and a taung in Burma. 

 The girha is a visum in Madras, but corresponds to no 

 measure in Burma. The balisht of Northern India is 

 the bighat of Bengal, the jana of parts of Madras, and 

 the htwa of Burma ; but the general table is very 

 similar throughout the whole country. The gaz 

 (gaj, var, or gaik) varies considerably from place to 

 place, and for different articles, and altogether the 

 number of variants is great ; the great majority, 

 however, are within three inches of the British yard, 

 but there are yards in use as long as 48 in. and as short 

 as 19 in., but such are exceptional. To a greater or 

 less extent all are being assimilated to the British 

 yard of 36 in., and in fact many are known by their 

 iength in sixteenths (girha) of that measure. The 

 foot and inch are but little known, the yard being 

 almost always subdivided, for practical purposes, into 

 16 girha. 



The most important of other yards are : 



(i.) That based on the marivan or morni (crooked) 

 hath of approximately 24 in. This cubit was arrived 

 at by measuring from the elbow round the tip of the 

 outstretched middle-finger and back to the knuckle; 

 it gives rise to a yard of 40 in. to 48 in., and the British 

 yard is deemed equal to ij morni hath. It is in use 

 in several districts of the Panjab near the Indus and 

 the adjacent parts of the Frontier Province. It is 

 divided into sixteenths (known as sharak or tasu) and 

 also into twentieths, which are called girha. 



(ii.) The Peshawari yard of 3S in. to 38J in., of which 

 the British yard is deemed to be 15 girhas (i.e. Hths). 

 It is used throughout most of the Frontier Province. 



(iii.) The Imarati or Mi'mari gaz (masons' or 

 carpenters' yard). It is still used fairly widely in 

 the north-western part of the United Provinces and 

 the adjacent parts of the Panjab. Its usual length is 

 33 in., and it varies from 32-i in. to 34 in. It forms part 

 of a special table used in the building and carpentry 

 trades. This is : 4 pain (or 2 sole) =one sut ; 4 

 sut =one pan ; 4 pan =1 tasu ; 24 tasu =one imarati 

 gaz. This table is however sometimes applied to the 

 British yard, giving rise to a tasu of exactly ij in. 

 This yard is probably identical with the tachumii/am 

 of the southern districts of Madras, which is 33 in. in 

 length and used by carpenters and masons only. 

 In the South Arcot district there is also a special 

 "architectural inch" of i£ in. British, 24 of which 

 make the " architectural yard." In Bombay city 

 yards of 32 and 24 tastt are occasionally- used for 

 measuring cloth, this tasu is i£ in. British measure. 

 Beyond the similaritv of names of the subdivisions 

 there would appear to be no connection. 



(iv.) The Ilahi or Akbari gaz, originated by Akbar 

 to represent one pace for purposes of land measure- 



NO. 2757, VOL. I IO] 



ment, and at first 33 i in. in length, but now varying from 

 31 1 in. to 40 in. It is over much of Northern India the 

 basis of many indigenous systems of land measurement. 



On the Malabar coast the yard is to some extent 

 replaced by the hole, a measure of similar length, which 

 consists of 24, or in places of 26J, angulams (oTvirals), 

 which appear to be the length instead of the breadth 

 of a finger joint, inasmuch as one angulam is held 

 exactly to equal the diameter of a rupee or 1 1 111. 



Apart from the measures used for measuring land 

 and distance there are practically no measures of any 

 importance larger than the yard. Those for land 

 measurement are closely connected with measures of 

 area and will be considered therewith. Measurements 

 of distance are usually vague. The normal indigenous 

 unit is the kos (or in Madras the hros). Though 

 supposed to be 4000 cubits it really has little, if any, 

 connexion with that unit and varies from i-i to 3 

 miles. The corresponding unit in Burma is the 

 daing or taing, supposed to contain 7000 cubits, but 

 in reality equally vague. With the construction of 

 roads and railways and the indication of miles and 

 furlongs thereupon, these measures are now almost 

 universally known and used. A somewhat unfortun- 

 ate complication has, however, been introduced into 

 the Panjab by the invention of a Canal " mile " of 

 5000 feet divided into five equal parts, each of which 

 (from the shape of the " ith-milestone " or burj) is 

 termed a burji. Somewhat interesting is the intro- 

 duction of new measures of length by reason of the 

 way in which land is subdivided in the Canal colonies 

 into marabbas (squares) and killas of 1 100 ft. and 220 ft. 

 square respectively. The lengths of the sides of 

 these square areas are becoming known as measures 

 of length under the names of the areas. 



Most frequently however distances are referred to 

 b\ T the average villager as "the length of a field," 

 " a gunshot," " the distance to which a man's voice 

 will carry," etc. 



Measures of Area. — There can be little doubt 

 that the first measures of area depended on the 

 amount of work involved in cultivating the area 

 concerned, or the amount of seed required to sow, or 

 produced by it. Thus the bigah, the most wide- 

 spread unit of area, is said to have originally repre- 

 sented the area a pair of bullocks could plough in a 

 day. Other units are defined as the area a pair of 

 animals could maintain under cultivation throughout 

 a year, or that they can harrow or sow in a day, or 

 that a man can weed in a day. Many units are based 

 on the area sown with some stated quantitv of seed ; 

 in rice-growing areas by the number of paddy plants 

 required for planting it, or as the area which a man 

 (or sometimes a woman) can plant in a day, and so 

 on. Another measure used in some parts is the area 

 which can be guarded from the depredations of wild 

 animals by one watchman on a raised platform. In 

 Baluchistan a common measure of land is the area 

 which can be irrigated in 24 hours. 



These methods of estimating areas are still widely 

 used by the cultivators themselves in the less thickly 

 populated areas, such as most of the Central Provinces, 

 Burma and Chota Nagpur, and parts of Bombay, 

 Madras and Assam and the Himalayan tracts. 



In the more densely populated parts of the country, 

 where the value of the land is greater, a more definite 

 method has been evolved. This throughout almost 

 the whole of both India and Burma seems to have 

 been based on a square each side of which is a certain 

 number of paces, but which is now always expressed in 

 terms of cubits. The length of this unit is extremelv 

 variable, but it would appear that in selecting a 

 length the simplest that could be expressed con- 

 veniently in both cubits and paces was originallv 

 taken. Thus many of these units are near to 5 



