CHAPTER VIII.
How were Primitive Weight Units fixed?
Ordiar ex minimis.
Carm. de ponderibus.
We have seen that the Chinese system of weights is based
upon natural seeds of plants, and we have actually found the
wild hillsmen of Annam and Laos weighing their gold dust by
grains of maize and rice. But it may be urged by the advocates
of a Babylonian scientific origin based on the one-fifth of
the cube of the royal ell, which in turn is based upon the sun's
apparent diameter, that the Chinese names of weights are merely
conventional terms taken from the name of certain seeds, and
on the other hand that the mere fact that a very barbarous
people like the Bahnars of Annam weigh their gold dust by
grains of rice is no evidence that people in a higher stage of
culture were content with such rude metric standards. I
propose to show in this chapter that it has been the actual
practice of peoples as far advanced in civilization as the ancient
Greeks or Italians, to employ seeds as weights down to the present
day in Asia, that it was the general practice in the middle
ages, that it was likewise the practice of the Romans of the
empire, of the Greeks, and finally that such too was the practice
of the Assyrians themselves at a period long before the
bronze Lion weights were ever cast, or the stone Duck weights
were carved. If I succeed in proving this proposition, the doctrine
that the art of weighing was scientific must give place to
the contention that it was purely empirical.
