52 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 



nating from the Eastern custom of attaching seals, as the pledge of 

 the owner's faith in any given ohject. This theory satisfactorily pre- 

 dicated the exact order of the derivative fabrication of coins, which 

 may noAv, with more confidence, be deduced from the largely-increased 

 knowledge of the artisan's craft and mechanical aptitude of the ancient 

 inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the relics of which the researches of 

 Layard, Loftus, and Botta have recovered in so near an approach to 

 their primal integrity. The universal employment of clay for al- 

 most every purpose of life, including official and private writings, with 

 the connecting seals that secured even leather or parchment documents, 

 extending down to the very coffins* in which men were buried, natu- 

 rally led up to marked improvements in the processes of stamping and 

 impressing the soft substance nature so readily hardened into durabi- 

 lity, and to which fire secured so much of indestructibility. If moist 

 clay was so amenable to treatment, and so suitable for the purpose of 

 receiving the signets of the people at large, we need scarcely be un- 

 prepared to find yielding metals speedily subjected to a similar process 

 ■ — for the transition from the superficially-cut stone seal to the sunk 

 die of highly-tempered metal which produced the Darics, would occupy 

 but a single step in the development of mechanical appliances. In 

 effect, the first mint stamps, were nothing more than authoritative 

 seals, the attestation-mark being confined to one side of the lump of 

 silver or gold, the lower surface bearing traces only of the simple con- 

 trivance necessary to fix the crude coin. In opposition to this almost 

 natural course of invention, India, on the other hand, though possessed 

 of, and employing clay for obvious needs, f had little cause to use it as a 

 vehicle of record or as the medium of seal attestations ; if the later 

 practice may be held to furnish any evidence of the past, her people 

 must be supposed to have written upon birch bark, J or other equally 

 suitable substances so common in the south from very remote ages,§ 



* Mr. J. E. Taylor, " Jour. Roy, As. Soc„" xv. 414. Loftus, " Chaldsea," p. 

 204. 



f Wilson, " Rig Veda." vol. iii. p. xiv. " Arriaxi," lib. v. cap. xxiv., and lib. 

 viii. cap. x. Hiouen-Thsang, "Memoires," vol. i. p. 333, &c. 



X The primitive Persians of the north-east also wrote upon birch bark. Ham- 

 za Isfahani, under the events of A. H. 350 (a. d. 961), adverts to the discovery 

 at Jai (Isfahan), of the rituals of the Magi, all of which were written, in the 

 most ancient Persian language, on birch bark. See also Q. Curtius, viii. 9, § 

 1 5 ; Reinaud, " Mem. sur 1'Inde," 305 ; " Ariana Antiqua," pp. 60, 84 ; Prin- 

 sep's " Essays," ii. 46. 



§ " Arrian," viii. 7. "La Vie de Hiouen-Thsang," 158. 



