国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.   481

"a diner/I.."' When anyone finds that notes of this kind in his possession are worn or torn he takes them to a certain public office analogous to the Mint in our country, and there he gets new notes for his old ones. He incurs no expense whatever in doing this, for the people who have the making of these

I I do not understand the text to mean that a balistet is precisely worth a dinar, but that it is the unit in which sums are reckoned by the Chinese as the dinar is with the Mahomedans. Paper money has been spoken of at pp. 287-89, and at p. 116 some speculations were ventured on the origin of the term Balisht or Balish. I have since been led to believe that it must be a corruption of the Latin follis.

The common meaning of that word is a bellows ; but it was used also by late classical writers for a leather money-bag, and afterwards (in some sense) for money itself, "just as to this day the Italians apply the term purse to a certain sum of' money among the Turks" (Facciolati, Lipsiœ, 1839). Further, the term follis was also applied to a certain " pulvillus, sedentibus subjectus, qui non tomento aut plum% inferciebatur, sed vento inflabatur," or, in short, to an air-cushion.

Now we have seen (p. 116) that Balish was also applied to a kind of cushion, as well as to a sum of money, such as in later days the Turks called a purse. This double analogy would be curious enough as a coincidence, even if we could find no clearer trace of connexion between the terms ; but there seems ground for tracing such a connexion.

Follis was applied to money in two ways under the Byzantine Emperors.

In its commoner application (06ÀAcs, (p(SAAn, etc.) it was a copper coin, of which 288 went to the gold solidus; and in this sense probably had no connection with the original Latin word. But follis was also used as a term for a certain quantity of gold, according to one authority the weight of 250 denarii, and was especially applied to a sort of tax imposed on the magnates by Constantine, which varied from two to eight pounds of gold, according to rank and income (see Ducange, De Inferioris Aevi Nurnismatibus, in Didot's ed. of the Dict., vii, pp. 194-5.)

the denarii mentioned here were gold denarii or solidi, then we have the Byzantine"FnLLIS=250 mithkûls, just as the BALISH of the Turks and *Tartars in later days was=500 rnithkûls. The probability that the latter

word is as directly the representative of the former as Dinar and Dirhem are of the (gold) Denarius and Drachma seems very strong, and probably would not derive any additional support from the cushions with which both words have been connec,, sd.

Follis, again, in the sense of a copper coin, appears to be the same

word as the Ar. ,Fats, spoken of at pp. 115-116, found also formerly in Spain as the name of a small coin foluz. And follis also in this sense, through the forms Follaris and Folleralis which are given in Ducange, is the origin of the folleri of Pegolotti (supra, p. 296).

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