1864.] 



On Ancient Indian Weights, 



268 



IX, or 4 plus 1 = 5. 35 Of course the Indian table of weights had in 

 practice to have its lower proportionate atoms accommodated to the 

 weights actually pertaining to the seeds in each instance, but the 

 higher gradations are uniformly grounded upon fours and tens ; and 

 to show how distinctly the idea of working by fours was fixed in the 

 minds of men, we find the gradational system of fines in Manu (viii.. 

 337) progressively stated as " 8, 16, 32, 64" So much for the anti- 

 quarian evidences, and to prove the custom at the other extreme of 

 the chain of testimony and its survival within a nation of almost 

 Chinese fixity, it may be asserted that the whole vulgar arithmetic is 

 primarily reckoned by gandas = " fours," and in the modern bazars 

 of India the unlettered cultivator may frequently be seen having a 

 complicated account demonstrated to him by the aid of a series of 

 fours, represented, as the case may be, by cowrie-shells, or grains of 

 pulse. I pass by other elements of calculation, such as the favourite 

 84 (7 X 12) 36 which might bring me into contest with the astrono- 

 mers, and content myself with resting this portion of my case on the 

 coincidences already cited, as I conclude the most ardent upholder 

 of Aryan supremacy can hardly arrogate for that ethnic division of 

 the human race any speciality in fours, 37 



I now proceed to quote the passage from Manu defining the author- 

 ised weights and equivalents of gold and silver, which I have cast into 

 a tabular form as more readily explanatory of the text, and as simpli- 

 fying the reference to relative scales of proportion, 



viii. 131. " Those names of copper, silver, and gold [weights] 

 which are commonly used among men for the purpose of worldly 

 business, I will now comprehensively explain. 132. The very small 

 mote which may be discerned in a sunbeam passing through a lattice 

 is the first of quantities, and men call it a trasarenu. 133. Eight of 

 those trasarenus are supposed equal in weight to one minute poppy- 

 seed (lihhya) three of those seeds are equal to one black mustard- 

 seed {raja sarshapa), and three of these last to a white mustard-seed 

 (gaura-sarstiapa). 134. Six white mustard-seeds are equal to a 



35. ct Journal Royal Asiatic Society," xix. p. 12. 



36. See an admirable essay on this number, under the head of " Chourasee," 

 in Sir H. M. Elliot's " Glossary of Indian Terms," Agra, 1845. 



37. M. Pictet, who has so laboriously collected all and everything pertaining 

 to the Aryans, in his " Paleontologie Linguistique," does not even notice the 

 number! — " Les Origines Indo-europeennes," Paris, 1863 3 p, 565. 



2 M 



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