Candy (unit)

The candy or candee (Marathi: खंडी, khaṇḍī;Tamil: கண்டி, kṇṭi;Malayalam: kaṇḍi,kaṇṭi), also known as the maunee, was a traditional South Asian unit of mass, equal to 20 maunds and roughly equivalent to 500 pounds avoirdupois (227 kilograms). It was most used in southern India, to the south of Akbar's empire, but has been recorded elsewhere in South Asia. In Marathi, the same word was also used for a unit of area of 120 bighas (25 hectares, very approximately), and it is also recorded as a unit of dry volume.

The candy was generally one of the largest (if not the largest) unit in a given system of measurement. The name is thought to be derived from the Sanskrit खण्डन (root खुड्) khaṇḍ, "to divide, break into pieces", which has also been suggested as the root of the term (sugar-)candy. The word was adopted into several South Asian languages before the compilation of dictionaries, presumably through trade as several Dravidian languages have local synonyms: for example ఖండి kaṇḍi and పుట్టి puṭṭi in Telugu.

The candy was equal to twenty maunds, but the value of the maund was not standardised across South Asia. There were at least three different approximate values for maund in early nineteenth century India, ranging from 11.34 kg to 37.32 kg, and values from outside India varied even wider. Much of our knowledge of the values of South Asian mass units comes from an 1821 study ordered by the British East India Company and subsequently published as Kelly's Oriental Metrology, although the approximate value of 500 pounds for the candy is attested as early as 1618. The earliest European reference to the candy (1563) puts its mass at 522 arráteis (239.6 kg, 528.2 lbs.).

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