Note 1 — VOLUME II.

The commoner or standard coins of all three denominations have practically the same weight, which in the heavier examples is usually about 66 or 67 grains, though a few gold and silver coins exceed this weight, two silver ones of Niśśaṅka-Malla, from Mahiyangana wihāra, for which I am indebted to Prof. C. G. Seligmann, averaging 77½ grains. Out of 150 copper coins only one turned the scale at 69 grains. If we assume that the Indian copper scale of General Cunningham was followed, and that, with allowance for wear and oxidation, the correct original weight of all three classes was 72 grains, a massa of fine gold would be worth 12s. 8.92d. of our money. Compared with the Persian larin, the value of the silver massa of 72 grains, if fine silver, would be 9.82d., or 1/15.56 of the gold one. Respecting the copper coin, Dr. Davy stated early last century (Travels, p. 245) that the ridī (or larin) was then equivalent to sixty-four “Kandian challies,” that is, as he also terms them, “Dambadinia challies,” the common village name of the copper massas; at this ratio the silver massa of 72 grains would be equivalent to 60.57 copper massas, each being worth 0.162d., or about one-sixth of a penny.1 Late in the fifteenth century the Indian ratio of the value of copper to silver appears, according to Thomas, to have been 64 to 1, and at the beginning of the sixteenth, according to Whiteway, 80 to 1.2 I have met with no villager who knew what the coins termed kahawaṇuwa (kahāpaṇa) and masurama were.