As we have found among the barbarians of Asia the first beginnings of the art of weighing by the employment of grains of rice and maize, it is best for us to take first in order some other Asiatic countries lying towards the same region.
The great islands of the Indian Archipelago, singularly rich in all endowments of nature, have for ages enjoyed a high degree of culture. Conveniently placed, they have received all the advantages of contact with the civilization of China, India, and even that of the Arabs from the distant west of Asia. Never were people more favourably situated for obtaining foreign systems of weights and measures, if they felt so disposed, than the Malays of Java and Sumatra and the other islands of the Indian Archipelago. That admirable observer, John Crawfurd, writing in 1820 says[1]: "In the native measures everything is estimated by bulk and not by weight. Among a rude people corn would necessarily be the first commodity that would render it a matter of necessity and convenience to fix some means for its exchange or barter. The manner in which this is effected among the Javanese will point out the imperfection of their methods. Rice, the principal grain, is in reaping nipped off the stalk with a few inches of the straw, tied up in sheaves or parcels and then housed or sold, or otherwise disposed of. The quantity of rice in the straw which can be clenched between the thumb and the middle finger is called a gagam or handful, and forms the lowest denomination. Three gagams or handfuls make one pochong, the quantity which can be clenched between both hands joined. This is properly a sheaf. Two sheaves or pochongs joined together, as is always the case, for the convenience of being thrown across a stick for transportation, make a double sheaf or gedeng. Five gedengs make a songga, the highest measure in some provinces, or twenty-four make an hamat, the more general measure. From their very nature these measures are indefinite and hardly amount to more accuracy than we employ ourselves when we speak of sheaves of corn. In the same district they are tolerably regular in the quantity of grain or straw they
- ↑ History of the Indian Archipelago by John Crawfurd, F.R.S. Vol. I., p. 271.
