Gold
mas or
tahil
ingot
Java, 9th century AD
Gold by another name
Inscriptions dating to the second half of the
ninth century provide the earliest evidence of a currency system in
Java, which was based on the use of standardised weights. One of
the unit weights, known as the
masa. The abbreviation
mas came to mean
'gold' or 'wealth'. Another name
for the same unit of weight is
tahil.
One
of the faces of this small cube of gold has a single character that
most closely resembles the Nagari letter
ta. This indicates a
link with Hindu settlers from India, who bought the Nagari script
to Java. It is thought the letter
ta is used here to stand
for the currency denomination
tahil. The opposite face
has a deep, square incuse (stamped) mark, divided by a pointed,
vertical line with a dot on either side. It has been suggested that
this may represent a
linga,
symbolic of the Hindu god Shiva.
H.C. Millies, Recherches sur les monnaies -1 (The Hague, 1871)
R.S. Wicks, Money, markets and trade in ea (Ithaca, N.Y., Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992)