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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ancientnoob, post: 1992964, member: 44140&quot;]JA- Thats a great question that I do not have the answer too. </p><p><br /></p><p>This snippet is from a coinage survey of Myanmar...</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>During the 9th century a new wave of migrants entered the Irrawaddy valley from the north.&nbsp; These people were the Burmans.&nbsp; The newcomers settled the central region of the valley around the present day city of Mandalay, about 350 miles north of Rangoon.&nbsp; The Burmans adopted some aspects of the culture of Mons and Pyus they displaced, but they did not pick up on the idea of coinage. </i></p><p><i>&nbsp; The Burmans consolidated their holdings into a kingdom with a capital at Pagan, about 100 miles southwest of Mandalay on the Irrawaddy.&nbsp; The Pagan kingdom expanded south and west (the easy direction - eastward was mountainous jungle inhabited by fierce Shan mountaineers).&nbsp; Around 1044 the Burmese king Anawrahta captured the Mon kingdom of Thaton at the mouth of the Irrawaddy, thus gaining the possibility of international trade. </i></p><p><i>&nbsp; The Harikela kingdom went belly up sometime during the 11th century.&nbsp; Much of its Burmese territory was taken by the ethnically Thai kingdom of Nanchao, centered in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.&nbsp; By this time the use of coinage had ceased throughout Burma.&nbsp; Trade was conducted by barter, partially accounted in cowries, and partly in metal ingots, including silver, gold, copper, lead, and tin.&nbsp; The Burmans brought with them a standard weight, the kyat, of a bit more than 16 grams, that has descended into the monetary denomination today. </i></p><p><i>&nbsp; The Pagan kingdom fell victim to the southernmost foray of the Mongols.&nbsp; Pagan itself was taken and destroyed in 1287.&nbsp; The Mongols didn’t stay long.&nbsp; The steamy jungles did not suit them, and they were harried by the feisty Shan from their mountain strongholds.&nbsp; In the wake of the Mongol retreat various Shan principalities came and went in northern Burma, while in the south a new Mon kingdom coalesced, with its capital at Pegu in Tenasserim. </i></p><p><i>&nbsp; In the Burmese context &quot;Pagan&quot; is a place rather than a religion.&nbsp; The first ethnically Burmese empire had its capital in the city of that name, enduring about three centuries before being extinguished by the Mongols.&nbsp; During the Pagan period Buddhism became firmly established as the majority religion, and many of the cardinal aspects of modern Burmese culture developed. </i></p><p><i>&nbsp; Numismatically, the Pagan period has little to show.&nbsp; Stone inscriptions and the accounts of Chinese travellers state that trade was accounted in gold, silver, and copper, but these went by weight, the standard being the kyat of about 16 grams.&nbsp; Cowries are also mentioned.&nbsp; One 12th century Chinese account speaks of crescent shaped ingots, there is a record from the 16th century mentioning different shapes of silver ingots, and yet another mentioning some official regulation of the silver/copper ratio in circulating &quot;money,&quot; but no examples of these things have come to light in modern times.&nbsp; Chinese coins did not seem to circulate in Burma, so for the long period from the 8th to the 17th century we have, from a collecting standpoint, more or less nothing. </i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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