14 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 1, 
Ancient Indian Weights.—By E. Tuomas, Esq. 
(Continued from p, 266 of Vol. XXXIII.) 
[ Received 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 be satisfactorily set at rest by the testimony of the 
published Sanskrit version of Yajnavalkya,* the commentary on which, 
known as the Mitdkshard, defines the Karshika as “ measured by a 
Karsha” (Karshenonmita) ; while the copper KArsna itself is described 
as Tdmrasya Vikdra, or “copper transformed,” 7. e., worked up from 
its crude metallic state into some recognised shape.; This proves, in the 
one case, that the interpretation of the term Kdrsha, as a coin, or 
fabricated piece of whatever description, is fully authorised ; and, in the 
other, that the copper Karshdpana, 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 
* Mitékshara, i. 364. 
+ Professor Wilson missed the full force of this explanation in adhering to 
the old translation of Manu—where “ Kdrsha or Pana” are given.—“ Ariana 
Antiqua,” p. 404; Prinsep’s “ Essays,” i. 53, note. 
+ 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 Kdrsha 
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—414 
diameters of his copper coins being assigned to the Guz or local yard.—Num. 
Chron,, xv. 164, 

