14 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 1, 



Ancient Indian Weights. — By E. Thomas, Esq. 



(Continued from p. 266 of Vol. XXXIII.) 



[ Eeceived 28th September, 1864. ] 



I concluded the first portion of this article with a suggestive recti- 

 fication of the reading of a passage in Manu, tending to prove that 

 coined money was in use at the period of the compilation of the text 

 of India's earliest lawgiver. Any question that might have remained 

 on this subject may he satisfactorily set at rest by the testimony of the 

 published Sanskrit version of Yajnavalkya,* the commentary on which, 

 known as the Mitdhshard, defines the Kdrshika as " measured by a 

 Karsha" (Karshenonmita) ; while the copper Karsha itself is described 

 as Tdmrasya Vikdra, or "copper transformed," i.e., worked up from 

 its crude metallic state into some recognised shape. f This proves, in the 

 one case, that the interpretation of the term Karsha, as a coin, or 

 fabricated piece of whatever description, is fully authorised ; and, in the 

 other, that the copper Kdrshdpana, as Manu's text would imply, con- 

 stituted the ready referee of weight, which its general currency as a 

 coin of the period was calculated to ensure. Indeed it is curious to 

 note how near an adherence to very primitive customs this state of things 

 discloses, in that the original idea of the use of definite and subdivided 

 weights of metal for commercial purposes, is still so closely identified 

 with the secondary function these fixed units had come to fulfil in the 

 guise of money, as circulating measures of value, while they retained 

 their hereditary acceptance as bases of the metric system. $ This 

 duality of function remained so essentially associated in the minds of 

 the people, that the revised scales of weights of the British Govern- 

 ment, in compliance with local predilections, were adapted and adjusted 

 under a similar system, — the current Rupee recommending itself as the 



* Mitakshara, i. 364. 



f Professor Wilson missed the full force of this explanation in adhering to 

 the old translation of Manu — where " Karsha or Pana" are given. — " Ariana 

 Antiqua," p. 404 ; Prinsep's " Essays," i. 53, note. 



J An early example of the use of the Karsha as a weight is given in the 

 Buddhist Legends (Burnouf, Introd. Hist. Bud., p. 258), where one Karsha 

 weight of sandal wood is stated to have cost " 500 Karshapanas." The custom 

 of employing current coins as measures of weight appears to have become 

 subsequently so much of a recognised system in Hindustan, that Sikandar bin 

 Bahlol extended their metric functions into tests of measures of length — 41 -J- 

 diameters of his copper coins being assigned to the Guz or local yard. — Num. 

 Chron., xv. 164. 



