CHAPTER VII. The Weight Systems of China and Further Asia.

We have now had a survey of the monetary and weight systems of China, Annam, Cambodia and Laos, and everywhere found that the nên or bar of 10 taels is the highest known metallic unit, and that except in Laos the counting of money even by the catty or pound is unknown, the Chinese themselves only employing the tael as their highest monetary unit, the catty being kept as in Annam and Cambodia itself for ordinary goods. This is borne out by the practices in the weighing of gold. In Attopoeu, the region where gold is found, 8 chi (= 2 ticals or bats = 4 slings = 30 grammes) are exchanged for a bar of silver (= 100 chi = 375 grammes). M. Aymonier thinks that the gold bat, that is to say the weight in gold of a tical (15 grammes, 234 grains Troy), must have been the unit for weighing gold, as formerly it was necessary to give a gold bat in order to marry a girl of the blood royal. This gets considerable support from the fact that in Sieng-Khan the gold bat has only the weight of a sling or chi (58½ grains Troy), that is the quarter of a tical, and the weight of the tical or bat is called a damling. In fact they hardly reckon gold in any other way than