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The ''tical'' is a

unit Unit may refer to: Arts and entertainment * UNIT, a fictional military organization in the science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' * Unit of action, a discrete piece of action (or beat) in a theatrical presentation Music * ''Unit'' (alb ...

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

(or weight in the colloquial sense) historically used in

Mainland Southeast Asia Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

, particularly in the predecessor states of

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

, where it is known as the ''kyat'' (''kyattha''), and of

Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...

and

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

, where it is known as the ''baht'' (''bat''). It formed the basis of the modern currencies the

Myanmar kyat The kyat (, or ; my, ကျပ် ; ISO 4217 code MMK) is the currency of Myanmar (Burma). The typical notation for the kyat is "K" (singular) and "Ks." (plural), placed before the numerals followed by " /-" The term ''kyat'' derives from t ...

and the

Thai baht The baht (; th, บาท, ; currency sign, sign: ฿; ISO 4217, code: THB) is the official currency of Thailand. It is divided into 100 ''satang'' (, ). The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand. Society for Worldw ...

, as well as the historical

Cambodian tical Prior to the year 1875, the tical was the currency of Cambodia as well as Siam and Laos. However, as a result of French intervention in the region, the tical in Cambodia was replaced in 1875 by the Cambodian franc. The term tical was the name ...

, which were originally valued as the unit's weight of silver. It remains in widespread use in Myanmar, where it is approximately equivalent to , and in the gold trade in Thailand, where it is defined as for bullion and for jewellery. For other uses, the ''baht'' is defined in Thailand as exactly . The unit probably arose from multiple origins. In Burma, it was likely equivalent to the Mon unit ''diṅkel'', which is mentioned in several thirteenth-century inscriptions from northern Thailand and may have originated in India, while in the Khmer Empire, it was probably derived as a subdivision equalling a quarter of the ''

tael Tael (),"Tael" entry
at the

The Thais adopted the Khmer units as the

Ayutthaya Kingdom The Ayutthaya Kingdom (; th, อยุธยา, , IAST: or , ) was a Siamese kingdom that existed in Southeast Asia from 1351 to 1767, centered around the city of Ayutthaya, in Siam, or present-day Thailand. The Ayutthaya Kingdom is conside ...

displaced the Khmer Empire in the fifteenth century, and as Ayutthaya gained control of the east coast of the

Andaman Sea The Andaman Sea (historically also known as the Burma Sea) is a marginal sea of the northeastern Indian Ocean bounded by the coastlines of Myanmar and Thailand along the Gulf of Martaban and west side of the Malay Peninsula, and separated from ...

and developed cross-peninsular trade, the units, of roughly the same size, probably became regarded as equivalent by traders, including the Portuguese, who popularized its recognition by Westerners as the ''tical''.

See also