A picul or tam is a traditional Asian unit of weight, defined as "as much as a man can carry on a

shoulder-pole A carrying pole, also called a shoulder pole or a milkmaid's yoke, is a yoke of wood or bamboo, used by people to carry a load. This piece of equipment is used in one of two basic ways: *A single person balances the yoke over one shoulder, with ...

History

The word ''picul'' appeared as early as the mid 9th century in Javanese. Following Spanish, Portuguese, British and most especially the Dutch colonial maritime trade, the term ''picul'' was both a convenient unit, and a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

unit that was widely understood and employed by other

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

s (in modern Malaysia and the Philippines) and their centuries-old trading relations with Indians,

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

and Arabs. It remained a convenient reference unit for many commercial trade journals in the 19th century. One example is ''Hunts Merchant Magazine'' of 1859 giving detailed tables of expected prices of various commodities, such as coffee, e.g. one picul of Javanese coffee could be expected to be bought from 8 to 8.50 Spanish dollars in

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

and Singapore.

Definitions

As for any traditional measurement unit, the exact definition of the picul varied historically and regionally. In imperial

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and later, the unit was used for a measure equivalent to 100

catties The catty, kati or , pronounced as jin in Mandarin and gan in Cantonese, is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia, notably for weighing food and other groceries in some wet markets, street markets, and sh ...

.新华字典 ('' Xīnhuá Zìdiǎn''), Peking, 1984. In 1831, the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...

authorities acknowledged local variances in the definition of the pikul. In Hong Kong, one picul was defined in ''Ordinance No. 22 of 1844'' as avoirdupois pounds.Weights and Measures – Ordinance No. 22 of 1844
Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online. The modern definition is exactly 60.478982

kilogram The kilogram (also kilogramme) is the unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI), having the unit symbol kg. It is a widely used measure in science, engineering and commerce worldwide, and is often simply called a kilo colloquially ...

s. The measure was and remains used on occasion in Taiwan where it is defined as 60 kg. The last, a measure of rice, was 20 picul, or 1,200 kg.

The stone

While the character "石" ("stone") is normally pronounced ''shí'' ( Cantonese: ''sek6''), as a unit of measure it is pronounced ''dàn'' ( Cantonese: ''daam3''). Historically, during the

Qin Qin may refer to: Dynasties and states * Qin (state) (秦), a major state during the Zhou Dynasty of ancient China * Qin dynasty (秦), founded by the Qin state in 221 BC and ended in 206 BC * Daqin (大秦), ancient Chinese name for the Roman Emp ...

and

Han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

dynasties, the stone was used as a unit of measurement equal to 120

. Government officials at the time were paid in grain, counted in stones. The amount of salary in weight was then used as a ranking system for officials, with the top ministers being paid 2000 stones. In the early days of Hong Kong as a British colony, the stone (石, with a Cantonese pronunciation given as ''shik'') was used as a measurement of weight equal to 120 catties or , alongside the picul of 100 catties. It was made obsolete by subsequent overriding legislation in 1885, which included the picul but not the stone, to avoid confusion with European-origin measures that are similarly called stone.Weights and Measures Ordinance, 1885
Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online.

References

{{reflist Chinese units in Hong Kong Units of mass Human-based units of measurement