Finally Crawfurd says, “The nice question of weighing gold, the only native commodity which could not be estimated by tale or bulk, has given rise to the use of weights among the natives themselves. Grains of rice are still occasionally used in the weighing of gold in the neighbourhood of the gold mines in Sumatra” (p. 274).
I have quoted at full length these passages in order that the reader may accept with fuller confidence statements so instructive as regards the origin of weight, the first object to be weighed, and the origin of the picul , or as we may call it the talent of Eastern Asia. Nine years before Crawfurd wrote there had appeared William Marsden’s admirable History of Sumatra . He gives us far fuller information on the subject of gold than Crawfurd has done. Thus he writes: “In those parts of the country where traffic in this article (gold dust) is considerable, it is employed as currency instead of coin; every man carries small scales about him, and purchases are made with it so low as to the weight of a grain or two of padi . Various seeds are used as gold weights, but more especially these two: the one called rakat or saga-tim-bañgan ( Glycine abrus L or abrus maculatus of the Batavian trans.), being the well-known scarlet pea with a black spot, twenty-four of which constitute a mas , and sixteen mas (mace) a tāil ( tael ): the other called saga puku and kondori batang ( Aden anthera pavonia L), a scarlet or rather coral bean much larger than the former, and without the black spot. It is the candarin weight of the Chinese, of which one hundred make a tāil and equal, according to the tables published by Stevens, to 5·7984 gr. Troy, but the average weight of those in my possession is 10·50 Troy grains. The tāil differs however in the northern and southern parts of the island, being at Natal, Padang, Bencoolen and elsewhere twenty-six pennyweights six grains. At Achin the bangkal of thirty pennyweights twenty-one grains is the standard. Spanish dollars are everywhere current and accounts are kept in dollars, sukus (imaginary quarter dollars) and kepping or copper cash, of which four hundred go to the dollar. Besides these there are silver fanams , single, double and treble (the latter, called tali ), coined at