COMMERCE AND TRADE 81
Chowra, with spears and racing canoes made in the Central group, in
return for a certain class of iron hog-spears and pots, and are sold by
the Chowra people to Car Nicobar for cloth, baskets of Car Nicobar
make, and a great variety of articles valued at Car Nicobar in coco-
nuts. There is a considerable trade between the Shom Pen and the
coast people of Great Nicobar in canes, canoes, wooden spears, bark-
cloth, matting, and honey, for iron das and cotton cloths.
Without using coin, the Nicobarese have always been ready and
quick-witted traders in their great staple the coco-nut, using it also as
currency, and obtaining for it even important articles of food which
they do not produce, their clothing, and many articles of daily use.
The system is to value the article to be purchased in nuts, and to pay
for it by the other articles also valued in nuts. Thus land valued at
ro,ooo nuts has been paid for by about 50 manufactured articles valued
in the aggregate at io,ooo nuts. So also a racing canoe valued at
35,ooo nuts has been paid for by some zoo articles valued in the
aggregate at the same figure.
The Nicobarese keep no records of reckoning beyond tallies, and
have no methods for any mathematical process beyond tallying. The
basis of all reckoning is tally by the score, and for trade purposes by
the score of scores ; and on this basis they have evolved a system
which is naturally clumsy and complicated, but has become simplified
where trade is briskest, and is made exact by an interesting series of
rising standards up to very large figures. Tally is ordinarily kept by
nicks with the thumbnail on strips of cane or bamboo, and on Car
Nicobar, where the trade in coco-nuts is largest, by notches cut in sets
on a stick. For ordinary purposes Nicobarese reckoning stops at
about 6oo, except on Car Nicobar, where it stops at 2,000; but for
coco-nuts it extends everywhere to very large figures, and even the
Shom Pen have no difficulty in reckoning up to 8o,ooo. A set of
commercial scales will be found at p. 218 of the Census Report,
igoi, and a detailed examination of the system of reckoning at
p. 244,
The Nicobarese keep rough calendars by notches on wood. They
reckon time by the monsoon season, or period of regular winds.
Roughly the south-west monsoon blows from May to October, and the
north-east from November to April, or for six months each. Two
monsoons thus make a solar year, though the Nicobarese have no
notion of such reckoning. Within a monsoon, time is approximately
divided by moons or lunar months. Each moon is divided clearly into
days, or as the Nicobarese reckon them nights, up to thirty, and more
if necessary. As the monsoons do not fall exactly to time, but may be
late or early, there is a rough and ready method of rectifying errors. in
reckoning, by a system of intercalary nights, when the moon cannot.be
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