Candy (unit)
Encyclopedia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
n unit
Units of measurement
A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a physical quantity, defined and adopted by convention and/or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same physical quantity. Any other value of the physical quantity can be expressed as a simple multiple of the unit of...
of mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
, equal to 20 maund
Maund
The maund is the anglicized name for a traditional unit of mass used in British India, and also in Afghanistan, Persia and Arabia: the same unit in the Moghul Empire was sometimes written as mun in English, while the equivalent unit in the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia was called the batman...
s and roughly equivalent to 500 pounds avoirdupois
Pound (mass)
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
(227 kilogram
Kilogram
The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...
s). It was most used in southern India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, to the south of Akbar's
Akbar the Great
Akbar , also known as Shahanshah Akbar-e-Azam or Akbar the Great , was the third Mughal Emperor. He was of Timurid descent; the son of Emperor Humayun, and the grandson of the Mughal Emperor Zaheeruddin Muhammad Babur, the ruler who founded the Mughal dynasty in India...
empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
, but has been recorded elsewhere in South Asia. In Marathi, the same word was also used for a unit of area
Area
Area is a quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional surface or shape in the plane. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat...
of 120 bigha
Bigha
The bigha is a unit of measurement of area of a land, commonly used in Nepal, Bangladesh and in a few states of India including Uttaranchal, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan etc. The precise size of a bigha appears to vary considerably...
s (25 hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s, very approximately), and it is also recorded as a unit of dry volume.
The candy was generally one of the largest (if not the largest) unit in a given system of measurement. The name is thought to be derived from the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
खण्डन (root खुड्) khaṇḍ, "to divide, break into pieces", which has also been suggested as the root of the term (sugar-)candy
Candy
Candy, specifically sugar candy, is a confection made from a concentrated solution of sugar in water, to which flavorings and colorants are added...
. The word was adopted into several South Asian languages before the compilation of dictionaries, presumably through trade as several Dravidian languages have local synonyms: for example ఖండి kaṇḍi and పుట్టి puṭṭi in Telugu
Telugu language
Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
.
Unit of mass
The candy was equal to twenty maunds, but the value of the maund was not standardised across South Asia. There were at least three different approximate values for maund in early nineteenth century India, ranging from 11.34 kg to 37.32 kg, and values from outside India varied even wider. Much of our knowledge of the values of South Asian mass units comes from an 1821 study ordered by the British East India CompanyBritish East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
and subsequently published as Kelly's Oriental Metrology,It seems unlikely that Kelly actually measured any standards for the candy, or even that such large physical standards even existed. However, it can be assumed that he accurately measured standards for the maund (or a similar mass unit). His results are quoted to a precision of 1 dram avoirdupois
Dram (unit)
The dram was historically both a coin and a weight. Currently it is both a small mass in the Apothecaries' system of weights and a small unit of volume...
. although the approximate value of 500 pounds
Pound (mass)
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...
for the candy is attested as early as 1618. The earliest European reference to the candy (1563) puts its mass at 522 arráteis
Arratel
The arratel or arrátel, also referred as libra , was the fundamental unit of weight of the ancient Portuguese System of Measurement Units...
(239.6 kg, 528.2 lbs.).
The three Presidencies of British India had already undertaken a fair degree of standardisation of weights and measures by the time of Kelly's study.This process of standardisation was not complete until 1833 in the Bengal Presidency. In the Madras Presidency
Madras Presidency
The Madras Presidency , officially the Presidency of Fort St. George and also known as Madras Province, was an administrative subdivision of British India...
, the maund was fixed at 25 lbs. av. (11.340 kg),The Anglo-Hindoostanee Handbook (1850) gives the Madras maund as 25 troy pounds (9.331 kg), in contradiction with the values quoted in Prinsep (1840) that are far more complete and closer in time to the original British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
study of local weight standards (1821). It would seem unusual to have used troy weight
Troy weight
Troy weight is a system of units of mass customarily used for precious metals, gemstones, and black powder.There are 12 troy ounces per troy pound, rather than the 16 ounces per pound found in the more common avoirdupois system. The troy ounce is 480 grains, compared with the avoirdupois ounce,...
for such large commercial quantities, so Prinsep's value has been retained here. making the candy equal to 500 lbs. av. (226.796 kg). In the Bombay Presidency
Bombay Presidency
The Bombay Presidency was a province of British India. It was established in the 17th century as a trading post for the English East India Company, but later grew to encompass much of western and central India, as well as parts of post-partition Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula.At its greatest...
, the maund was fixed at 28 lbs. av. (12.701 kg), making the candy exactly equal to 5 hundredweight
Hundredweight
The hundredweight or centum weight is a unit of mass defined in terms of the pound . The definition used in Britain differs from that used in North America. The two are distinguished by the terms long hundredweight and short hundredweight:* The long hundredweight is defined as 112 lb, which...
(560 lbs. av., 254.012 kg). In Bombay itself (present-day Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
), a separate value of the candy was recorded for "grain", equal to 8 parahs or 358 lbs. 6 oz. 4 dr. (162.563 kg, see also below). In the Bengal Presidency
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency originally comprising east and west Bengal, was a colonial region of the British Empire in South-Asia and beyond it. It comprised areas which are now within Bangladesh, and the present day Indian States of West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Orissa and Tripura.Penang and...
, where the candy was not traditionally used, the maund (or mun) was a much larger unit, 100 troy pounds
Troy weight
Troy weight is a system of units of mass customarily used for precious metals, gemstones, and black powder.There are 12 troy ounces per troy pound, rather than the 16 ounces per pound found in the more common avoirdupois system. The troy ounce is 480 grains, compared with the avoirdupois ounce,...
The use of an exact figure in troy weight for the Bengal Presidency stems from the definition of the local measurement system, based on the tola. The Bengal seer (1/80 of a Bengal maund) was exactly 72/35 pounds avoirdupois [Prinsep (1840), p. 65], so the Bengal maund was exactly 1152/7 lbs. av. (37.324 kg, equivalent to a candy of 746.5 kg).
The effects of this standardisation can also be seen in other territories under direct British control. In Ceylon, the candy (also known as the bahar
Bahar (unit)
Bahar is an obsolete unit of measurement.* In Iran it was a unit of length approximately equal to 3.25 cm * In Oman, it was a unit of mass equal to approximately 808 kg...
) was 500 lbs (226.796 kg) as on the Continent. Use of the candy is also recorded in British Burma
British rule in Burma
British rule in Burma lasted from 1824 to 1948, from the Anglo-Burmese Wars through the creation of Burma as a province of British India to the establishment of an independently administered colony, and finally independence...
, where it was the equivalent of 150 vis: its equivalent in Imperial units was measured as 500 lbs. (226.796 kg) in Pegu and 550 lbs. (249.476 kg) in Rangoon.
Perhaps the most striking example is from the princely state
Princely state
A Princely State was a nominally sovereign entitity of British rule in India that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule such as suzerainty or paramountcy.-British relationship with the Princely States:India under the British Raj ...
of Travancore
Travancore
Kingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...
in southwest India. At the British East India Company trading station of Anjengo, (near modern-day Kadakkavoor
Kadakkavoor
Kadakkavoor is a village in Thiruvananthapuram district in the state of Kerala, India.-Demographics: India census, Kadakkavoor had a population of 25362 with 12199 males and 13163 females....
), the candy was equal to 35 telong and fixed at 560 lbs. (254.012 kg), as in Bombay. At Colachy (modern-day Kolachal
Kolachal
Colachal is located within the administrative jurisdiction of Kanyakumari District. Colachel is a second grade Municipal town situated on the west coast of Kanyakumari District. It is a port on the Malabar coast, 20 km north-west of Kanya Kumari , the southernmost tip of peninsular...
) however, less than 50 mile
Mile
A mile is a unit of length, most commonly 5,280 feet . The mile of 5,280 feet is sometimes called the statute mile or land mile to distinguish it from the nautical mile...
s (80 km) to the south, the candy was measured at only 376 lbs. 1 oz. 2 dr. (170.583 kg).
In the region of the Central Provinces
Central Provinces
The Central Provinces was a province of British India. It comprised British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India, and covered parts of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. Its capital was Nagpur....
, the maund was roughly 40 lbs., which is probably about the value it had under the Mughal Empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
.Depending on the method of calculation, the Mughal mun can be estimated as either 34¾ lbs. av. or 47 lbs. av. [Prinsep (1840), p. 81]. The candy was not recorded as being in use as a unit of measurement in this region in 1821. Although not a part of the Central Provinces region, the unusually high value recorded for the candy in Baroda, Gujarat (modern-day Vadodara
Vadodara
Vadodara formerly known as Baroda is the third most populated city in the Indian State of Gujarat . It is one of the four cities with the population of over 1 million...
) – 892 lbs. 1 oz. 4 dr. (404.640 kg) – can be explained by this higher value of the Mughal maund. The candy in Surat
Surat
Surat , also known as Suryapur, is the commercial capital city of the Indian state of Gujarat. Surat is India's Eighth most populous city and Ninth-most populous urban agglomeration. It is also administrative capital of Surat district and one of the fastest growing cities in India. The city proper...
, the main port of Gujerat, is also consistently quoted as being much larger than the same unit further south.
Unit of area
The candy (खंडी, khaṇḍī) is also recorded as a unit of areaArea
Area is a quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional surface or shape in the plane. Area can be understood as the amount of material with a given thickness that would be necessary to fashion a model of the shape, or the amount of paint necessary to cover the surface with a single coat...
in Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
, equal to 120 bigha
Bigha
The bigha is a unit of measurement of area of a land, commonly used in Nepal, Bangladesh and in a few states of India including Uttaranchal, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan etc. The precise size of a bigha appears to vary considerably...
s. It is impossible to accurately convert this to modern units given the huge variability in the different values of the bigha in different locations. In particular, Kelly's 1821 study of South Asian metrology is completely silent on land measures in the Bombay Presidency
Bombay Presidency
The Bombay Presidency was a province of British India. It was established in the 17th century as a trading post for the English East India Company, but later grew to encompass much of western and central India, as well as parts of post-partition Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula.At its greatest...
. Molesworth defines the Marathi bigha (बिघा, bighā) as equal to twenty pandas (पांड, pāṇḍa) or to 400 square kathys (काठी, kāṭhī), but also notes that it varies in different districts. The same author defines the kathy as "a land measure,—five cubits and five handbreadths […] also the measuring rod": other authors are silent on the unit.There is a Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
i unit of area called the kattha (कठ्ठा), approximately 338.57 m2: this is implausibly large for the Marathi kathy, and there is no reason to assume that the two units are the same. A cubit
Cubit
The cubit is a traditional unit of length, based on the length of the forearm. Cubits of various lengths were employed in many parts of the world in Antiquity, in the Middle Ages and into Early Modern Times....
is roughly equal to five handbreadths
Hand (unit)
The hand is a non-SI unit of measurement of length, now used only for the measurement of the height of horses in some English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA. With origins in ancient Egypt, it was originally based on the breadth of a human hand...
, so the kathy can be taken to be roughly 25 square cubits: that is, 8100 square inch
Inch
An inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...
es or 6.25 square yards. This would make the bigha roughly 2500 square yards, or half an acre
Acre
The acre is a unit of area in a number of different systems, including the imperial and U.S. customary systems. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land.The acre is related...
, in agreement with measurements in other areas of India. The candy, therefore, can be taken to be approximately 60 acres or 25 hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s.
The celebrated Scottish orientalist Sir Henry Yule
Henry Yule
Sir Henry Yule was a Scottish Orientalist.He was born at Inveresk, Scotland, near Edinburgh, the son of Major William Yule , translator of the Apothegms of Ali. Henry Yule was educated at Edinburgh, Addiscombe, and Chatham, and joined the Bengal Engineers in 1840...
gives a slightly larger value for the candy as a unit of area ("approximately 75 acres"), and describes it as the area of land which will produce one candy of grain. The Telegu unit of the putty (పుట్టి, puṭṭi) is also used in the same way: one putty of land is that area which will produce one putty of rice.
Unit of dry volume
Several sources also describe the candy as a unit of dry measureDry measure
Dry measures are units of volume used to measure bulk commodities which are not gas or liquid. They are typically used in agriculture, agronomy, and commodity markets to measure grain, dried beans, and dried and fresh fruit ; formerly also salt pork and fish...
. Again, it is difficult to give an accurate conversion to modern units, as most sources quote conversions to mass units for specific goods,Prinsep (1840) goes as far as to assert that India had no true measures of dry volume, despite his description of the methods for determining the mass equivalent of dry measures (pp. 79–80). and the few specific conversion factors that exist range from 8 to 25 bushel
Bushel
A bushel is an imperial and U.S. customary unit of dry volume, equivalent in each of these systems to 4 pecks or 8 gallons. It is used for volumes of dry commodities , most often in agriculture...
s. More plausible is that one candy of dry measure was the volume
Volume
Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains....
that would have been occupied by one candy (in mass) of water, that is about 254 litres (7 bushels) in Bombay (present-day Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
).
- One candy of "grain" (unspecified) in Bombay was recorded by Kelly as 8 parahs or 358 lbs. 6 oz. 4 dr. (162.563 kg), compared to a standard Bombay candy of 560 lbs. (254.012 kg), a factor of 0.640. This factor is lower than the relative densityRelative densityRelative density, or specific gravity, is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity usually means relative density with respect to water...
of modern hulled riceWhite riceWhite rice is the name given to milled rice that has had its husk, bran, and germ removed. This alters the flavour, texture and appearance of the rice and helps prevent spoilage and extend its storage life. After milling, the rice is polished, resulting in a seed with a bright, white, shiny...
(0.753) but higher than the that of rough rice (0.577). - One parah for salt measure for Bombay was reported as 1607.6 cubic inchInchAn inch is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot...
es (26.344 litreLitrepic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...
s), implying a candy for dry measure of salt as 210.8 litres: the factor (1.20, based on 254 litres for one candy of water) is identical to the relative density of caked salt. - The Ceylonese standard parah was a cube of sides 11.57 inches, that is 25.41 litres.
- Molesworth defines the Marathi palah (पल्ला, pallā) as 120 seersSeer (unit)A Seer is an obsolete unit of mass and volume that was used in parts of Asia.-India:In India, the seer was defined by the Standards of Weights and Measures Act as being exactly equal to 0.93310 kg...
, implying a candy of 960 seers and a maundMaundThe maund is the anglicized name for a traditional unit of mass used in British India, and also in Afghanistan, Persia and Arabia: the same unit in the Moghul Empire was sometimes written as mun in English, while the equivalent unit in the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia was called the batman...
of 48 seers. The Bombay seer is given by Kelly as 11 oz. 3 dr. (317.2 g) for both grain and other commercial goods.
Not all grain measures in candies should be taken as dry measures. The United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Statistical Office reported that the candy was in use in the 20th century:
- in east India for measuring riceRiceRice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
, with a value of approximately 210.636 kg compared to the old Madras standard candy of 226.796 kg; - in Ceylon (later Sri LankaSri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
) for measuring copraCopraCopra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut. Coconut oil extracted from it has made copra an important agricultural commodity for many coconut-producing countries. It also yields coconut cake which is mainly used as feed for livestock.-Production:...
, with a value of 560 lbs.
Both of these are obviously related to the candy as a unit of mass.