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 object. This theory satisfactorily pre- 
dicated the exact order of the derivative fabrication of coins, which 
may now, 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 
—tor 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,} 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,} or other equally 
suitable substances so common in the south from very remote ages,§ 
* Mr. J.E, Taylor, “Jour. Roy. As. Soc.,” xy. 414, Loftus, ‘* Chaldza,” p, 
204. 
+ Wilson, “ Rig Veda.” vol. iii, p. xiv. “ Arrian,” lib, v. cap. xxiv., and lib. 
vil. cap. x. Hiouen-Thsang, “Mémoires,” vol. i. p, 333, &e. 
{ The primitive Persians “of the north-east also wrote upon birch bark. Ham- 
za Isfahani, under the events of 4, 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. Curtins, viii. 9, § 
15; Reinaud, “* Mém. sur I’Inde,” 305; “ Ariana Antiqua,” pp. 60, 84; Praia 
sep’s “ Essays,” i ii. 46, 
§ “ Arrian,” viii. 7. “La Vie de Hiouen-Thsang,” 168, 

