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

We saw that a buffalo was worth 280 hoes; it is therefore an easy task for a Bahnar to tell its worth in gold. It was equally simple for the first Aryan or Semite who framed the gold shekel standard to compute the exact amount of gold which would represent the value of an ox. But perhaps we have not reached the earliest stage of all in the development of a standard for the sale of gold. I ventured to put forward in 1887 the suggestion that the way in which the amount of gold which represented the value of a cow was first fixed approximately was by measuring it in some way, as for instance by taking the amount which would fit in the palm of the hand, somewhat in the fashion that rustics measure gunpowder or shot for a gun. What was then but a mere guess may be now regarded as fairly certain. That excellent observer, M. Aymonier, notes that the Tapak tribe, who live at a distance of six days’ journey from Attopoeu, wash gold. The women wade into the streams (after having first carefully placed five flowers or five leaves at the foot of a tree close by the stream to ensure good luck). Each dips a water-tight bag into the sand at the bottom of the stream, and after a long series of rewashings and cleansings at last gets the gold dust in a state of purity¹⁴. The savages carry it to Attopoeu, and sell it at the rate of 9 chi of gold for a nên or bar of silver (= 100 chi). The relative value in Attopoeu is 8 chi or two bats of gold to one bar (= 100 chi) of silver, or as they express it one tical of gold is changed for 12 ticals of silver. “The tical of gold is,” it is said, “equivalent to the weight of 32 grains of a peculiar kind of rice of the country, with large grains and of a red colour, which is called ivory rice.” Here we have the weighing by natural grains as before, but Aymonier adds (p. 35) that “the natives relate that gold was formerly so abundant that